*From a special Basketball Sphere correspondent in Italy

Three times in his career he was an All-Star, he won the NBA Rookie of the Year award in 2009, and in the 2010/2011 season, at just 22 years old, he became the youngest MVP in the history of the world’s best league.

He played 723 games in the NBA with an average of 17.4 points, 5.2 assists and 3.2 rebounds per game, and one of the biggest “WHAT IF” questions in NBA history refers precisely to “the Rose that withered too early.”

The reason for this is numerous injuries, the biggest blow to his career being the anterior cruciate ligament injury during the 2012 playoffs against the . Everyone then asked why  was even on the court with the score at 99-87 for the  with less than two minutes to go, but that’s another story…

He was also a member of the United States national team and won two gold medals, both times at the FIBA World Cup (2010 in Turkey and 2014 in Spain).

For our portal, he answered a question related to European players who make a significant difference in the NBA caravan, namely , , and . He described in detail why each of the three mentioned adapted to the world’s best league without much difficulty.

 said  for Basketball Sphere.

He announced his retirement from basketball in September 2024, and the  plan, where he left the biggest mark in his career, is to raise his jersey with the number “1” under the arena’s rafters during the 2025/2026 season.