After a record-setting, best-in-class celebration in 2025 when Derrick retired from the NBA, the Bulls returned to make and celebrate history - retiring Derrick Rose’s No. 1 jersey. An honor bestowed on only Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Bob Love and Jerry Sloan, in the franchise’s 60 years, Rose's jersey retirement transcended on-court achievements.
A hometown hero and symbol of the city, the jersey retirement went beyond basketball. Rose's legacy taps into an emotional vein of the city, one of incredible highs and lows. Derrick is a native Chicagoan who joined the Bulls as the number one overall draft pick in 2008. In just his third season, Derrick also became the youngest MVP in NBA history. A year after his MVP season, Derrick suffered a career and franchise-altering ACL injury and faced other setbacks in following seasons.
This was moment needed to be carefully crafted to honor Derrick and create a deeper connection with Bulls fans.
For the jersey retirement and the banner itself, the Bulls and Derrick wanted to make sure the gravity of the moment didn’t rely only on the live crowd reaction at the game.
The goal was to create a long-form video that gave fans an emotional window into a private, unrepeatable moment — one that made them feel present for history. The Bulls gave Derrick an opportunity to take in the moment alone, with the people and teammates closest to him, and to create a piece of content that captured history in perpetuity.
Approaching the video, the Bulls wanted to create a piece of content that matched the significance of the honor and elicited real emotion in the famously composed, soft-spoken Derrick. It was also important to give Derrick’s family a private moment to celebrate the achievement, ultimately leading to a video that allowed fans to share in that emotion.
In our planning, Derrick told us that his success is shared with those who supported him throughout his basketball career. To reflect the people behind the player, we wanted to highlight several voices:
The Banner Makers: The Bulls traveled to W.G.N. Flag & Decorating Co., a family business that has been around since 1916 on Chicago’s South Side. They produced nearly all the banners that hang in the United Center and were now in charge of crafting No. 1. The team went behind the scenes, capturing the hand-stitching of the banner and allowing Derrick’s family to take in the work privately, even inserting rose petals behind the number on the banner.
The First Teammates and Coaches: The banner then traveled to Derrick’s high school, Simeon Career Academy, where his former teammates, coaches and community members reflected on his career accomplishments and impact while also stitching rose petals into the lining.
Surprising The Man in the Jersey: Then, of course, there was Derrick. One of the central production challenges was orchestrating the final surprise entirely without Derrick’s knowledge. We coordinated his teammates flying in from across the country, managing access to the United Center, and keeping all the filming covert.
We reserved the entire United Center just for this purpose. Derrick walked onto the pitch-black court, alone, to find his No. 1 banner lowered to eye-level and lit by a spotlight from the rafters. He could literally touch the fabric and experience the moment in a way he could not on gameday.
The setup was intricate and built to elicit an organic and authentic reaction from Derrick. 12 cameras were set up in the dark of the United Center in different positions, allowing us to move with Derrick without interfering in the moment. Cameras were strategically hidden and positioned around the bowl, tunnels and court sightlines to capture reactions from multiple angles. As he may have convinced himself internally when focusing during the biggest moments of his career, Derrick could now feel and say with confidence that he was the only person there. The man in the arena.
After a moment alone, his family joined in, followed by his Bulls teammates – all the people who stood by his side through the highlights and hardships. When they surrounded Derrick, emotional and elated, his teammate and friend Joakim Noah looked at the banner and said, "This is our championship.” That quote underlined not only the deep relationships those teams built together but how much this moment meant – not only to them but the fans that cheered them on.
The video was among the most engaging pieces of content from a data perspective throughout the whole Derrick Rose jersey retirement celebration, which included more than 200 posts. The banner video, which was posted in full across Bulls social accounts and shared in clips, ultimately garnered just shy of 30M impressions, 1.5M engagements and 15M video views.
The clip of his teammates surprising him was the most viewed singular video posted by the Bulls during the entire celebration (more than even Michael Jordan’s surprise message) with 9.5M views on Instagram and 9M on Facebook alone. On YouTube, the longform video has 370,000 views.
Beyond the numbers, the video created something more rare: a genuine, cultural moment. We knew that the gameday ceremony and its permanent home in the rafters would symbolize and communicate Derrick’s story and legendary impact. But, the Bulls wanted to go beyond that bar – creating a separate piece of content that elicited a distinct emotional reaction that will be remembered just as much as the ceremony itself.
The comments section became a testament to the video's emotional resonance, with viewers consistently describing being moved to tears. That response traces back to Rose himself, who looked up at his banner surrounded by the people who helped put him there, and said: "Every teammate, every fan — we up there now."
