NBA - It's official: Team USA's Rose becomes youngest MVP

CHICAGO (NBA) - Chicago Bulls and team USA point guard Derrick Rose is only in his third NBA season but already owns a prestigious honor that many great players who have come before him never did.
 
The Chicago native was on Tuesday named as the NBA's Most Valuable Player after leading the Bulls to a league-best 62 wins during the regular season.
 
He averaged 25 points, 7.7 assists and 4.1 rebounds in his third season.


Wes Unseld had been the youngest MVP, an honor he grabbed as a 23-year-old rookie with the Baltimore Bullets in the 1968-69 campaign.
 
Fresh off a gold-medal triumph with the United States at last summer’s FIBA World Championship in Turkey, Rose carried the momentum of that success into the club season.
 
Even before the NBA campaign began, Rose said he wanted to be the league MVP, a comment that many sports journalists in America dismissed out of hand.
 
"Back in training camp when I said I wanted to be MVP, I wasn't trying to be cocky at all," Rose said.
 
"I knew that I put a lot of hard work in over the summer in the off-season, and I just wanted to push myself."
 
Now he has a chance to become one of the best point guards ever.
 
Rose is the first Bull to be named league MVP since 1998, when the legendary Michael Jordan captured the honor for the fifth and last time in his glorious career.
 
"I'm not even touching that man right there," Rose said of Jordan,  a six-time NBA champion.
 
"I'm far away from him. If anything, it would be great to be close to him. This is a different team, a different era."
 
Rose thanked his mother, Brenda, after being named MVP.
 
"She's just a strong lady and she just wants to see her kids do right," he said.
 
"For me to win this, I know it's probably unbelievable to her.
 
"It means a lot to me and it means a lot to my family."
 
Now Rose will try to start making inroads into the more important achievement.
 
He will try to become an NBA champion.
 
The Bulls trail Atlanta 1-0 in their Eastern Conference Semi-Final series, which resumes on Wednesday night at the United Center in Chicago.
 
FIBA