It’s safe to say I didn’t find myself in this part of my city too often. I’d played at some courts with reputations of being dangerous and violent, not to mention the surrounding neighborhoods. Englewood was a neighborhood I’d mostly avoided and it wasn’t mere coincidence. Whether it deserved the position is up for discussion, but when a neighborhood is the poster child for urban gun violence in Chicago, perhaps even the United States, you don’t play around. This wanna-be tough white kid from the north side of the city was using some of his surprisingly frequent sick days from school to pilgrim to Murray Park. Holy ground, for it was here that Derrick Rose supposedly became Derrick Rose.

I turned right off of Ashland onto 73rd St and drove west for a few short blocks. The neighborhood became more insular as I drove from it’s main arterial getaway, and I began to notice a few confused looks from passersby and porch observers. The confusion and probable distrust stems from Chicago’s segregated nature where you don’t often see white people in your neighborhood unless they are police, and that isn’t this story. No one was playing when I arrived which isn’t surprising for a noon in the middle of February. Furthering the probability that I was an undercover cop I slowly circled the park not sure what I was looking for but feeling humbled just the same. The courts were in pretty good shape for an average Chicago Park District layout, well kept grass enclosing the space. Small family bungalows lined the streets along with a CTA bus upkeep facility. Derrick Rose had a tough upbringing to a single mother in a neighborhood plagued by gun violence and poverty, the result of systemic neglect on many levels. He was also surrounded at all times by his three loving brothers and honed his craft in a nice park centered in his neighborhood. If you were looking for gangbangers under the rim while little black boys screamed in delight over someone’s crossover, you’d be disappointed on this February afternoon. Our stories of place and people often do not account for nuance in any sense; absolutism is far easier to spread and narratives of Englewood’s gun violence spread to every corner of the globe while local organizations like IMAN work to better their neighborhood everyday for little to no attention. Murray Park and its surroundings are no stranger to the ills that infect many parts of the southside of Chicago but there are also glorious days of bringing community together, even room for boring cold days in February. If you drove past today you’d see one of the best outdoor courts in the city, funded by it’s golden child Derrick Rose. Derrick is still a legend to people all the way in China, but many parts of inner city Chicago still revere him in the same light of hero from his days at Simeon High School. Countless others have probably only heard of D Rose because of his rape trial. Just as to Englewood and Murray Park, there is nuance to Derrick Rose’s story that deserves to be explored to uncover future truths about sexual violence, as well as perseverance and hard work.

The current enduring image of Kobe Bryant’s basketball career is his triumphant limp to the finish line, scoring 60 points and knocking the Jazz out of the playoffs for his final performance. The societal zeitgeist of Kobe is generally pretty positive these days, but he was a villain for most of the prime of his career. Along with the reality of his selfish playstyle, Kobe had to answer to a sexual assault case which began in 2003. Kobe claims he had an adulterous consensual encounter while the nineteen year old counterpart accused Bryant of raping her. Before diving into deeper implications, and of course nuance, the point is that Kobe’s legacy has endured despite all of this. Whether that’s right or wrong is what’s to be discussed.

You cannot have a conversation about sexual assault and rape without talking about patriarchy. The enveloping culture of male dominance is so rooted into society that we often don’t realize it exists at all. The recent #MeToo movement, Women’s Marches, and a new wave of feminism are rightly challenging these norms, and this is jarring to many who don’t even see the fight that’s being fought. From extreme examples of formal inequality and the pay gap to more subtle examples like the pink tax women still struggle to break through these barriers from India to Englewood. This is not entirely that story, but it sets the table for our conversation about sexual assault, wherein women historically have not been believed, or even acknowledged for the crimes against their bodies and overall agency. Unless armed with a political or racist agenda, women have been slowly fighting against the perceived inconsequence of male sexual dominance. It’s gone from an accepted part of nature to something more nuanced thanks to activists and allies not just recently, but over centuries. There’s still a lot of work to be done on this front, sexual assault can also be a difficult crime to convict when it’s not as obvious as a stab wound, but a he say she say. However, it’s imperative to state that victims need to be believed and simply listened to, helped to heal. There is no nuance at all in the act of sexual violence and rape, consent can be given or taken at any time. Different cultures and individuals all have different views of what sex means to them but without a foundation of standards and ethics in law and in heart women and their allies will continue to march in the streets while men continue to moan that they can’t even say “Hello” to women anymore. We’ve reached a point where there is no excuse to not adhere to the ethics of consent and overall decency towards women. Overall decency is where nuance creeps in and different people have different standards of how they’d like to be flirted with, unequivocally however there should be no room for confusion over sexual assault of any kind when understanding these ethics. I probably just lost many of you but the conversation can’t continue without this stated in plain.

Role models aren’t exempt from these expectations, whether you grew up in Italy or the southside. Of course, there are people who take advantage of someone’s fame to further themselves, but this is the exception to the norm. Just as often people of status are using their fame to indulge, and that’s finally being addressed in #MeToo. When talking about Kobe and D Rose none of us know what happened in those rooms, what everyone’s intentions were, sexual preferences, perceived understandings. We should be inclined to listen to the victims as historically women in this position have not even been acknowledged, even vilified for trying to smear a good man.

Derrick Rose is a good man. Perhaps I’m biased seeing as he was a role model to my younger self, but I’ve seen the anti violence work he’s been involved in. Stories trickle out about him paying for the funerals of children taken far too early from gun violence. LeBron James deserves all the credit in the world for building his school, Rose has been donating vast investments into Chicago Public Schools for years and cares deeply about his city. He has even been criticized for crying too often in his public career, oftentimes these tears have been seen when talking about his hometown. This does not exempt him from the aforementioned ethical foundation in sexual conduct. In order for these ethics to transcend culture and individual alike, there needs to be a collective education. It’s very likely that when Derrick Rose claimed he didn’t know what consent was, he had never been formally taught the nuance of consent or the implications of doing what he did that night. He almost certainly however has the human foundations to understand how to respect a woman and be kind. We will never know if he is being caught in an unfortunate result of his fame or if he drunkenly committed an evil against a woman’s body, but we can use his story to push the conversation of sexual violence to a better place. Schools have the brunt of the responsibility on this front, but evermore we are learning about society through pop culture and our idols. If a kid from Murray Park sees that Derrick could and should have avoided his situation on many fronts, he can learn from his role model far better than a health teacher. Kobe and Derrick like many of us were young men who committed mistakes, no matter if you think it was small or incredibly damaging. Acknowledging and healing victims of abuse is absolutely the top priority, once past the trauma how can we use stories like Rose and Bryant’s to make sure this happens less and less until it doesn’t happen? The details in their cases aren’t what this conversation is about, it’s remembering that all of us have nuance and deserve to be looked at with the same detail that we demand people do unto us.

There is no room for sexual assault against women in any capacity, victims need to be believed and heard. Forgiveness and growth are still an evolving part of the equation. Using Rose’s story, his inspiring work ethic and humble giving back, all the way to this story is an important one of nuance that can be taught to so many of his admirers. When his fans can realize that he’s done some incredible things, worked his tail off to retain his skills despite his injuries, and has made mistakes that could be avoided with a better understanding of the ethics of sexual encounters, Derrick’s legacy can be a great one while still honoring the woman whether she was an opportunist or a victim.

When Derrick swished his final free throw and blocked Dante Exum’s game tying shot attempt, he had returned to hero status. The court had torn his body apart countless times and yet he still was able to score fifty points in a single game against the highest level of competition the world has to offer. Just as when he honored his mother in his MVP speech of 2011, I shed a tear or two, so proud of the kid who had worked his way out of Englewood with a basketball. Derrick Rose as the man and father, like his neighborhood, has nuance to his riveting story and can use his role model status to further our conversations about sexual violence, as well as perseverance and hard work. It’s his responsibility to his mother who he honored, as well as everyone who he touches who no doubt will have a woman near and dear to their heart.