Is Derrick Rose a Hall of Famer?

Breaking down the Hall-of-Fame case for Derrick Rose.

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Early this morning, Derrick Rose officially announced his retirement from the NBA. I think now would be a good time to dust off the old Keltner List and put Rose’s career under the microscope.

What is the Keltner List? It’s a series of subjective questions formulated by famed sabermetrician Bill James used to help assess whether or not a player should be elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Although the system was designed to evaluate baseball players, with a few minor tweaks it can also be used to assess the Hall-worthiness of basketball players. In this post, I will examine Rose’s case for the Basketball Hall of Fame.

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Was he ever regarded as the best player in basketball? Did anybody, while he was active, ever suggest that he was the best player in basketball?

At 22 years old, Rose became the youngest player in NBA history to win an MVP Award, averaging 25.0 PPG and 7.7 APG for the 62-win Chicago Bulls in 2010-11. However, I don’t think anybody seriously viewed him as the best player in the game. That unofficial honor would have gone to LeBron James, who had won the previous two MVP Awards and would go on to win the next two as well.

Unfortunately, Rose did not get a fair chance to build on that early success. He missed 27 out of a possible 66 games during the 2011-12 season with various ailments, then tore his left ACL in Game 1 of the Bulls’ Eastern Conference First Round series versus the Philadelphia 76ers. Rose missed the entire 2012-13 season recovering from that injury, then tore his right meniscus just 10 games into his comeback in the 2013-14 campaign. He was never the same player after those injuries.

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Was he the best player on his team?

I would say Rose was the best player on the Bulls for the 2009-10 through 2011-12 seasons, but after his first knee injury he was never the best player on any of his teams.

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Was he the best player in basketball at his position?

Rose won the MVP Award in 2010-11 and was also named to the All-NBA First Team that season, so I think it’s fair to say he was viewed as the best point guard in the NBA at that time. However, that was the last season in which he was selected to play in an All-Star Game.

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Did he have an impact on a number of NBA Finals or conference finals?

Rose never reached the NBA Finals, and played in the conference finals just one time. He averaged 23.4 PPG and 6.6 APG in the 2011 Eastern Conference Finals, but shot just 35.0% from the field and the Bulls were dispatched by the Miami Heat in five games.

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Was he good enough that he could play regularly after passing his prime?

Yes, he was. Rose never approached his previous form after his knee injuries, but in his age 30-32 seasons he finished sixth, seventh, and third, respectively, in the Sixth Man of the Year Award voting.

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Is he the very best (eligible) basketball player in history who is not in the Hall of Fame?

No, I don’t think that he is. My choice for that somewhat-dubious honor would be Kevin Johnson.

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Are most players who have comparable statistics in the Hall of Fame?

Rose finished with career averages of 17.4 PPG and 5.2 APG. There are 23 eligible players who have averaged at least 17 PPG and 5 APG for their career, and 17 of them have been elected to the Hall of Fame. The six who have not been elected to the Hall of Fame are Gilbert Arenas, Steve Francis, Kevin Johnson, Stephon Marbury, Reggie Theus, and Gus Williams, and none of them came remotely close to winning an MVP Award (as Rose did).

Of course, I’m cherry picking to create the most favorable group possible for Rose, as he would place 22nd among these players in both PPG and APG. Let’s create a group in which Rose falls roughly in the middle.

There are 15 eligible players with career averages of 16-to-19 PPG and 4.5-to-6.5 APG (so 16 total players including Rose). Rose ranks eighth among these players in PPG and seventh in APG, so he’s basically in the middle of this group. I might as well list the other 15:

• Archie Clark

• Joe Dumars (HOF)

• Monta Ellis

• Steve Francis

• Walt Frazier (HOF)

• Gail Goodrich (HOF)

• Richie Guerin (HOF)

• Scottie Pippen (HOF)

• Brandon Roy

• Charlie Scott (HOF)

• Randy Smith

• Maurice Stokes (HOF)

• Reggie Theus

• Jo Jo White (HOF)

• Gus Williams

As you can see, eight of these players are Hall of Famers and seven are not. By the way, Rose is the only MVP in this group, and he’s one of four Rookie of the Year Award winners.

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Do the player’s numbers meet Hall of Fame standards?

Rose’s Hall of Fame probability is 2.5%, which is extremely low. If you look at the 10 eligible players who surround him (the five on either side of Rose), you won’t find any Hall of Famers.

Rose’s Hall of Fame standards score is 32, which puts him in the “feasible candidate” range. He’s tied for 44th place among all eligible non-Hall of Famers by this measure, although Rose himself is not yet eligible.

Note that both of the measures used above are based on past voting tendencies. In other words, they don’t necessarily reflect who should be elected to the Hall of Fame, but rather who will be.

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Is there any evidence to suggest that the player was significantly better or worse than is suggested by his statistics?

Aside from injury considerations, not really. Traditional statistics are inadequate, at best, for evaluating defense, but Rose was not noted for his abilities on that end of the floor.

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Is he the best player at his position who is eligible for the Hall of Fame?

Although he’s not yet eligible, I don’t believe Rose has the best resume among candidates who played point guard. Again, I would go with Kevin Johnson.

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How many MVP-type seasons did he have? Did he ever win an MVP award? If not, how many times was he close?

As noted above, Rose won the MVP Award in 2010-11 when he was just 22 years old. However, that was the only season in which he was a serious candidate for the honor.

Aside: Rose received one first-place vote in the 2020-21 MVP balloting, but this was the result of the fans getting what amounted to a single vote. He was not a serious candidate for the award, as Rose averaged 14.7 PPG and 4.2 APG in 50 games for the Detroit Pistons and New York Knicks.

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How many All-Star-type seasons did he have? How many All-Star games did he play in? Did most of the players who played in this many All-Star games go into the Hall of Fame?

Rose earned just three All-Star selections, an extremely low total for a Hall of Famer. There are only four players in the Hall of Fame who were selected to play in exactly three All-Star Games: Maurice Stokes, Charlie Scott, George McGinnis, and Jamaal Wilkes.

Stokes is not an apt comparison, as he was selected to play in the All-Star Game his first three seasons in the league before suffering a career-ending brain injury at the age of 24. Scott and McGinnis aren’t great comparisons, either, as both players were multi-time ABA All-Stars.

Rose, at his best, was better than Wilkes, although the latter was no slouch. He averaged 17.7 PPG on 49.9% shooting from the field, was a two-time All-Defensive selection, and won three championships with the Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Lakers.

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If this man were the best player on his team, would it be likely that the team could win an NBA title?

Not likely, but not entirely out of the realm of possibility. Rose was the best player on a Bulls team that reached the Eastern Conference Finals in 2011. While that team did not advance to the NBA Finals, Rose played an outsized role in them being in that position in the first place.

On a per-game basis, Rose was also the best player on the 2011-12 Bulls, the only Eastern Conference team to reach 50 wins in a lockout-shortened season. His injury in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference First Round ruined that team’s hopes of a championship run (they were eliminated in six games by the eighth-seeded Philadelphia 76ers).

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What impact did the player have on basketball history? Was he responsible for any rule changes? Did he introduce any new equipment? Did he change the game in any way? Was his college and/or international career especially noteworthy?

Rose won gold medals playing for the U.S. national team at the 2010 FIBA World Championship and 2014 FIBA World Cup. Other than that, there’s nothing else that gives his resume much of a boost.

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The Verdict

Rose played 15 seasons, but logged at least 2,000 minutes just five times (he also had five seasons in which he played fewer than 700 minutes). He appeared in fewer than 40 games in six of those seasons, and only reached the 70-game mark three times. Rose’s lack of high-impact seasons makes it really hard to create a solid statistical case for him.

I suppose the closest analogue to Rose would be Bill Walton, another injury-plagued star. But when you take a close look at their resumes, you’ll see that Walton’s is clearly more impressive than Rose’s. In particular:

1. Walton was a three-time consensus Player of the Year, two-time national champion, and two-time Final Four Most Outstanding Player in his three seasons at UCLA; Rose was named to the All-America Third Team and led Memphis to the national championship game* in his lone collegiate season.

2. Walton won two NBA titles, one in which he was the best player on the team and was named Finals MVP (1976-77 Portland Trail Blazers); Rose never reached the NBA Finals, and made it as far as the conference finals just one time.

* I’ll give Rose credit for the title game appearance even though the NCAA pretends it never happened.

I feel bad that Rose’s promising NBA career was derailed by injuries, and I admire his perseverance in working his way back to become a quality sixth man for several teams in the latter stages of his career. That said — and I know this probably won’t be a popular opinion — there’s just not enough there for me to elevate Rose to the level of Hall of Famer.