Now 31 and over eight years removed from becoming the youngest most valuable player in NBA history with the Bulls, Rose agreed with Perdue’s assessment that this may be the best he has felt mentally, physically and emotionally. “I believe so,” Rose said. “I’ve been through a lot. I was a kid when I first started off here. I was shy to the media. I didn’t want to talk to the media at all. It was a learning process. And I didn’t have a mentor at the time. (Agent) B.J. (Armstrong) could do all that he could do. But he never had the talent that I had or the spotlight that I had. He kind of let me just learn by actually just thrusting me in there and letting me figure it out myself.”