- Joel Lerner
- Derrick Rose when he was at Simeon in 2006
The Sun-Times‘s Michael O’Brien spotted my Tuesday Bleader item on Derrick Rose and wrote immediately to tell me one part of it was “simply not true.”
O’Brien, Rossi, and the Sun-Times deserve credit for their reporting, which apparently was more extensive than I recalled. But I’ll stand by my main point—and O’Brien doesn’t dispute it either. The stories didn’t stick. Led by Rose, the Bulls had just taken Boston, the defending NBA champs, to seven games in the first round of the playoffs. Rose had been named the league’s rookie of the year. Two-year-old history never seemed so ancient.
But by the time the University of Memphis got the future Bulls star’s transcript, the “D” had been boosted to “C.”
Rose was one of four Simeon athletes who benefited from a one-month grade boost in June 2007, sources told the Chicago Sun-Times Thursday.
The grade changes were outlined in a 2008 report by the Chicago Public Schools inspector general, a report that did not name Simeon or Rose. However, sources said, Rose was among four Simeon basketball players whose grades were temporarily inflated after their graduation—just long enough for them to be reflected on transcripts sent to colleges.
The grade-changing revelations are the second allegation of academic fraud to surface against the NBA’s top 2008 draft pick in as many days.
On Wednesday, the Memphis Commercial Appeal published portions of an NCAA letter alleging a stand-in took the SAT for a student who went on to play for the University of Memphis during the 2007-2008 season. Multiple sources have told news outlets that player is Rose.
