Rose refused to join Bulls' 2010 free-agent meeting with LeBron
In the summer of 2010, LeBron James took his talents to South Beach and shifted the landscape of the entire NBA.
But before James committed to the Miami Heat, the Chicago Bulls had a chance to make their pitch.
Renowned NBA trainer Rob McClanaghan was at the Bulls' facility working with Derrick Rose when the All-Star guard was approached by a member of management to help recruit James. However, Rose emphatically refused to fly out with Chicago's brain trust for their meeting with him.
"Of course he wanted LeBron on his team," McClanaghan told ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski on the latest episode of "The Woj Pod." "It wasn't like that. It's just that, 'I'm here. If you want to come play, let's do this together. But I don't need to go and recruit another man to come play with me.' He just didn't want to do it.
"And management obviously did want him to do it and Derrick refused to go, and ended up not going. His thing was, 'I'm here. You know me. You can call me ... whatever you want to do. Of course I want to play with you, but I'm not going to hop on a flight and beg someone to come and play with me.' That's just the way it is and that's just the way Derrick is."
While Rose wasn't present with the Bulls' brass during their courtship of James, the 2011 NBA MVP later revealed he did record a video for the club in an attempt to lure the Heat's eventual Big Three of James, Chris Bosh, and Dwyane Wade to Chicago.
"People always said I didn't recruit," Rose told reporters during a shootaround in October 2017, including K.C. Johnson, formerly of the Chicago Tribune. "I tried to recruit. I put out a video. But it wasn't for me to say that. I felt like the organization was supposed to say that. And they didn't.
"I don't know if (Wade, LeBron, Bosh) looked at it or played the video. But I made a video," Rose said.
Miami's trio of James, Bosh, and Wade made four consecutive NBA Finals from 2011-14, winning back-to-back championships in 2012 and 2013.
During that same span, Rose's Bulls came up short in both postseason matchups against the Heat, including a 4-1 series loss to Miami in the 2011 Eastern Conference finals.