THIRTEEN MILES SEPARATE Derrick Rose's apartment at the Trump Tower above the Chicago River and his boyhood home at 7305 S. Paulina St. When he's longing for something he can't articulate, perhaps a reminder of what he's gained, or maybe what he's lost, he gets in his car and makes the drive: often the E-Way to 57th Street, Garfield over to Ashland, then Ashland up to the Murray Park section of Englewood. When he arrives at his old house, he slows down but never, ever stops, turning back onto Ashland Avenue and accelerating toward his new life among the skyscrapers and meat palaces of downtown.

At one of those meat palaces this summer, sitting around a table upstairs, Derrick tells Reggie and Randall about his recent vacation. He got home two days prior from Sag Harbor in the Hamptons, one last breather before the most important basketball season of his life. At the end of his trip, he withdrew, full of tension, moving around the rented house like a ghost. When he's relaxed, he's hilarious, his tough magazine-cover frown replaced by a boyish grin, softening all his features. But when he's focused, he becomes quiet and shy. With the season staring him in the face, Derrick didn't feel like talking. His girlfriend noticed him turning inward. Seven hours before leaving the Hamptons, he texted Randall back in Chicago: He wanted to shoot when he got home.

Rose's private plane landed at Midway Airport, and a little while later he walked into his apartment high above the city. Sometimes he stands at the floor-to-ceiling windows and thinks. He can see his old neighborhood from his living room, and of all the distances people measure in their lives, such as the 30 months since he tore his ACL, this is the distance that matters the most.

He knows what is happening down there in the dark.

In the month before Derrick left for vacation, 68 violent crimes were reported in Englewood alone, and 49 of them occurred on the street or sidewalk. Almost every night, someone gets shot in the neighborhood, and the murders fill the pages of the Tribune and Sun-Times. It is not safe to go outside. Four months ago, the city reeled when a 14-year-old girl named Endia Martin was murdered, not by a stray bullet but in cold blood by another girl in a Facebook dispute over a boy. A South Side church filled with mourners. Before the service, Rose drove down and quietly went inside the sanctuary to pay respects to the parents, leaving again just as quietly, not wanting to create a scene. He just wanted them to know he too was mourning the loss of their little girl. When they looked up and saw Derrick, their eyes widened, because 13 miles south from his new life, he isn't a person but an idea, proof that better days might be ahead.

His mere presence embodies the idea of escape.

ALL DERRICK ROSE ever wanted was a new life for himself and his family. The desperation of that dream is often minimized in its retelling because the ghetto escape story is such a worn plot twist in the sports myth machine that the hopelessness of an urban slum is seen as an obstacle like any other, such as, say, a knee injury. He lived at the center of a limited, shrinking world.

Ask Derrick where he's from and he'll say, "Chicago."

Ask what part and he'll say, "South Side."

Ask what part and he'll say, "Englewood."

Ask what part and he'll say, "Murray Park."

Murray Park runs eight short blocks east to west, four longer blocks north to south: 71st to 74th Street, Ashland to Damen Avenue. The defining memory of growing up in a place like this isn't the violence, poverty or fear, but the oppressive and daily presence of limitations. The 71st Street boundary stood like an international border. On the other side, a rival set of Gangster Disciples controlled the area around Raster Park. Nobody crossed without permission. Their whole world consisted of those few blocks.

"I was too anxious. I wanted it too bad ... It just wasn't me." - Rose, on his first comeback.

Last month Reggie drove over to Raster and found the old basketball court gone. All that's left are the fading white lines. A few blocks away, Murray Park offers not only rims but the rarest of sights in a rough neighborhood: nets. Out of respect for Rose, and for the hope of a life beyond 71st Street, the Gangster Disciples and local residents protect the court.

A block west of the park, at least nine Roses lived in the small house on Paulina Street that belonged to his grandmother. His mom, Brenda Rose, worked multiple jobs, and her three older sons took care of Derrick, taking turns cooking meals. Reggie especially tried to be the father his brother never had. In an interview after his son, Derrick Jr., was born, Derrick offered a rare glimpse into the hurt he still hides, saying he knew he'd be a great dad, as long as he did everything different from his own father. Reggie is asked whether Derrick's dad had ever reached out to his famous and wealthy son.

"No," he says, and he changes the subject.

Despite Brenda Rose's jobs, the family fell behind in the usual ways that poverty encircles and traps: an unpaid bill to Sears, a bankruptcy a few years later in 2002, when 14-year-old Derrick, the same age as Endia Martin, was realizing that his skill might be the miracle a family like his needed to start over. He chased it at the exclusion of everything else, and although he made it, he and his family still carry the marks of Englewood. In expensive restaurants, with foie gras and lobster on the menu, Derrick will order a grilled cheese, ignoring the raised eyebrows and laughs of his brothers and friends, because there was a time when the comfort of a grilled cheese was the finest thing he could imagine.

BRENDA ROSE NOW lives in a nice house on a quiet, leafy cul-de-sac in the Chicago suburbs. Not long ago, she rented a bouncy castle for her 60th birthday, bringing all the grandkids over and finding a gift in their laughter, knowing they'd never live the life she left behind. Reggie Rose drives a Bentley and an Escalade, and at Harold's Chicken Shack, waiting on the order, he buried himself in his phone, looking at studio apartments in the same Trump Tower where his brother lives in a sprawling penthouse. They have investments, a share in the famous Giordano's pizza chain, and generation-skipping trusts so Derrick's money changes the arc of his family long after he's gone.

Derrick got the Rolls-Royce he always fantasized about, the one he promised he'd sleep in the first night he brought it home. He won rookie of the year in 2009.

Sitting on the back of Bulls team flights, he'd share his past with teammate Luol Deng, then ask questions about Deng's family and life in war-torn Sudan. Deng says he was struck by Derrick's compassion, by his innate understanding of overcoming something. "He was really interested in the African culture," Deng says. "He asked a lot of questions. It sparked his curiosity. His mom was similar too. When she met my mom, she asked a lot of questions. The questions somebody asks tells you a lot about a person. I think he asked questions like that because he cares. He has a huge heart. He can be emotional about it."

Then, in 2011, Rose became the youngest MVP in league history.

During the news conference, after being introduced with a comparison to Magic, Bird and Jordan, he smoothly thanked everyone, until he got to his mom. She looked up at him, and tears ran down her cheeks.

At the podium, he struggled to speak.

"Um ... ," he said, because how do you tell a story so heavy it drags down nearly everyone who must carry it?

Her lip quivered, and his lip quivered.

"Brenda Rose," he said, and his voice cracked.

They had escaped, and all because of him.

"Those were hard days," he said, looking down at his mom. "My days shouldn't be hard. My days shouldn't be hard because I'm doing what I love doing. That's playing basketball."

Eleven months later, he tore his ACL.

REGGIE SAT COURTSIDE that night, behind the basket, and Derrick fell to the ground right in front of his seat, maybe 10 feet away. All of the photos of the moment show the pain in Derrick's eyes, or the concerned doctors kneeling around him, but in a few of them, Reggie is visible in the background, sitting behind a TNT cameraman. He looks as if he's about to puke.

Trainers loaded Derrick into an ambulance. He'd left his phone in the United Center locker room, so he had nothing to do but think. The sirens stayed off, and in the back, still in his Bulls uniform, he thought he'd be OK. The ambulance hitting its brakes jostled his knee.

"Mine stopped at every light," he says now, laughing. "I felt a jerk at every light." His family followed behind the ambulance, a caravan of seven or so cars sticking close, but he couldn't see them. He was alone. Rush University Medical Center is a mile from the arena, rising between Damen and Ashland avenues, the boundaries of his former life, and inside doctors and nurses moved around, talking quietly to each other, running an X-ray and waiting for the results. "By that time," he says, "I think everyone knew that I tore my ACL. I didn't know, and they were just trying to hide it from me."

In front of the television, John Calipari watched the injury and knew the road ahead. He had reason to worry because, of the many things he'd learned about his former star guard at Memphis, one was Derrick's low tolerance for pain. One memory stuck out for the coach. Shortly after Derrick started practicing as a freshman, the Tigers scrimmaged against Saint Louis University, and going hard to the rim, Rose was forced to the ground by contact.

"He yelled like he was shot by a sniper," Calipari says, still remembering the stretcher. "I was literally physically ill."

He pauses, a savvy storyteller, waiting to deliver the most important detail.

"He practiced the next day," Calipari says.

At Rush hospital, Rose waited for his family to find him in his room. When Reggie finally walked through the door, he saw his brother still wearing his uniform, an air cast on his leg. "He's just looking at me like -- almost to the point that, like, he let somebody down," Reggie says. "He's like, 'I can't believe this,' with his head down. You know, I'm the strong brother. I'm the one that ruled with the iron fist. I couldn't protect him from that. And I couldn't protect myself from shedding a tear."

After about two hours, they gathered in Derrick's high-rise. He took off his uniform -- leaving one part of his life behind and starting another -- and stood in a hot shower. His family gathered in the apartment, and that night he could hear the murmur of their conversations. He climbed into bed and tried to sleep, unable to move his leg. Reggie tried to say the right things: "I said, 'Derrick, I know you a God-fearing man. It's like this: You prayed and asked God for everything you wanted in life, you went to college, you in the NBA, you got all this money. He gave you everything. So you gotta look at it like this: This could be a challenge for you. What do you have to do to keep it?'"