Photo Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports

Derrick Rose Reveals How Kobe Bryant Taught Him To Adapt To The League

Derrick Rose was one of those many great players whose careers unfortunately got derailed by terrible injuries. Some of these players completely failed to measure up, while others learned to be impactful eventually, and the youngest MVP ever definitely belongs to the latter.

Rose just averaged a career-high in field goal percentage with 49.0%, while tallying 18.0 points per game with the Detroit Pistons. Despite suffering major injuries in his career, Rose kept working on his game and eventually learned to adapt to an evolving league that gives more emphasis on shooters. 

Making his appearance on the ‘Pushin’ Thru’ podcast, Rose was asked on how he dealt with the rise of scoring point guards who can flat out shoot like Stephen Curry and Kyrie Irving. The 32-year old point guard said he learned to make adjustments from the late Kobe Bryant, who himself suffered a handful of injuries, but was able to sustain greatness for 20 years. 

“I will have to bring Kobe into it. If you look at his career, people see how great he is, his work ethic was crazy, but to play 20 years, you gotta be able to adapt. Not totally change your game but adapt little nuances of the game.”

“Kobe showed with work ethic, that with time, you can actually work on those skills. So with him making it, it gave me a chance to see him up close and how he became the player he is. He was paying attention to the way the game was changing.”