Russ Hubbard

Derrick Rose says his high school coach refused to let him play varsity as a freshman so he could learn discipline “They already had a decent team. They were missing a point guard. They probably could have used me.” “But he stood on me. He was like, ‘Nah, you ain’t bigger than the program.’” “Then when you start to learn who Hambrick was, how he coached Benji and the principles that he stood on, I totally understood it.” “Our JV team was thrashing people. But we were cool with each other. We made the varsity team good. We were that good.” “In practice, we were damn near fighting them because we were pushing them too hard. But Coach Hambrick did exactly what he was supposed to do.” “Because if I did go somewhere and play varsity, somebody else was just going to let me run wild and not get any discipline.”