9301120709 DETROIT FREE PRESS 930402 Friday, April 02, 1993 METRO FINAL

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1D Photo Color STEVEN R. NICKERSON Photo Color JULIAN H. GONZALEZ S Michigan point guard Jalen Rose hasn't been on top of his game during the NCAA tournament. He is shooting only 41 percent and averaging two fewer points than during the regular season. Jalen Rose: "I don't know if I'm the only leader here, but I know I've got the biggest mouth." MITCH ALBOM SPECIAL SECTION; NCAA FINAL FOUR ; SEE ALSO METRO EDITION PAGE 1D Copyright (c) 1993, Detroit Free Press AS ROSE GOES, SO GO THE WOLVERINES NEW ORLEANS -- The black plastic joystick is cradled tightly in his hands. Big hands. Long fingers. He raps his thumbs, faster, faster. "Nothing! You got nothing!" he teases his opponent. On the TV screen, cartoon football players race down a field. Jalen Rose is happy. His team is winning. "Told you," he says, intercepting a pass. "You got nothin. Nuuuuthin'." Rap music is playing on the speakers, and it mixes with the doodooleewoop of the video game, until the room sounds like a penny arcade inside a recording studio. In this mix of rhythm and bloops, this electronic carnival, Rose turns to me and says, "Go on, ask whatever you want." He barely takes his eyes off the screen. "I don't want to interrupt your game," I say. He snorts. "This guy?" He nods towards his cousin, Bobby, who is desperately trying to match Rose on the joystick. "He ain't nothing. I can talk to you and beat him at the same time." Uh-oh. Look out. People will hear that and say "Aha! Just as we suspected! Jalen Rose is cocky and rude." In fact, people are saying that already -- and they're just watching him play basketball. But those people miss a fundamental truth about Rose: This is who he is, and who he has always been. Stretched out on the couch, joystick in hand, friend by his side, cutting on him. Play basketball. Play video games. Turn up the music. Make jokes. By taking you into this environment, he is not being rude or cocky. He is actually saying, "I trust you. I am opening up. What do you want to know?" Sadly, very few will ever figure this out. Or even try. This weekend is the Final Four in New Orleans, and already the Wolverines are the Crescent City's most dissected citizens. They are the butt of more rumors, psychoanalysis and flat-out bashing than Roseanne and Madonnna combined. John Chaney, the Temple coach, suggested the Wolverines disgrace college basketball. Bill Walton called them "the most underachieving team in America." USA Today labeled them "The Fab Frauds" -- this, just one year after celebrating them as lovable young colts. And at the core of it all, the bull's-eye of all this venom, is the 20-year-old Rose, a tall, bony point guard, a shaved-head smart aleck, a prankster, a team leader, symbolic of Michigan's talent and attitude and easily the most complex personality in a Wolverine uniform. Here is a kid who sneers at his opponents, yet chuckles with little children, who yells "WHASSUP!" as if it's the only word in his vocabulary, but suddenly says, "A coach can't play favorites, it would be like a general inviting only half his troops to dinner." Here is a kid who was literally born in the streets, emerging from the womb as his mother was emerging from the car at the hospital. Too late to make it inside, the delivery was done right there, in the cold Detroit daylight, and in the frantic handling, baby Jalen actually banged his newborn head on the concrete. The scar stayed with him for years. With a start like that, should he be easily rattled? Unraveling the mystery No. And he is not. Not on a basketball court -- even if he shoots an air ball -- and not in real life, even if he is taunted by fans, or hounded by critics. "When people talk about me," he says, "that just shows how little they know. And it also shows how much they're wondering about me." "You like that, don't you? That they wonder?" He grins. "I do." The problem most folks have in figuring Jalen Rose, his bald head, his crooked smile, his oozing confidence, is that they try to squeeze him into their world. Won't work. You have to go to his world to get an answer. And his world is basketball. So imagine you're playing Jalen one-on-one. First thing he'll do is stare you down as you start to dribble. When you miss a shot, he'll say, "You're sorry," and laugh. He'll watch your face. See how you react. But when he has the ball, he won't offer any hints -- Will he drive? Will he put it up? -- he'll just wait until you commit, then go the other way. Now he's learned something else about you, and he tucks it quietly in his brain. This is Street Basketball 101. And Rose has played enough of it to last four lifetimes, in downtown Detroit, in St. Cecilia's summer leagues, across the country with AAU teams. It is what got him this far. It is the thing that makes him special, and the instinct he trusts the most. So is it hard to understand if he approaches off-the-court life with the same tactics? You meet him, he is aloof. He is checking you out. You make a move -- you ask a question, you write an article -- now he has a fix on you, he has an edge. And when it comes time for his contribution, he stays distant, watching, observing. His strength is his game face. He keeps it straight. "That is how I play the media game," he admits, a little surprised that someone has tapped into it. "I see what they're thinking, writers, reporters, but I don't say much to them. Just like on the court. The more they wonder about me, the better chance I have of winning." Leader of the pack Now, this might be nothing more than an interesting psychological footnote if Rose were not such an huge part of the Fab Five Formula. But he is. Chris Webber gets the headlines. Juwan Howard gets the work-ethic praise, Jimmy King the "underrated" tag, Ray Jackson "most improved." But Rose is the leader. He sets the tone. If the others saw Jalen scared or upset, they would likely follow suit. And so he doesn't show it. If he's happy, if he's worried -- there is only one exterior: Loud. "I don't know if I'm the only leader here," he says, "but I know I've got the biggest mouth. Wherever I've played, I've had the biggest mouth." Rose can talk. He can scold a teammate for dropping a pass -- "Stop playing with gloves on!" -- and he can tease his coach, Steve Fisher, "Hey, Fish, what hotel did you stay at in the 1991 NCAA tournament?" when he knows full well that Fisher's 1991 team never made it to the tournament. And this is what he does to people he likes! To opponents, his comments range from silence (more often than you think) to "You're gonna choke" (said often at the free-throw line) to simply "unprintable," he says. And yet, for all this noise, take a look at the Wolverines during warm-ups, or walking through a hotel lobby. Who is most often seen hugging a teammate, or throwing a long arm over someone's shoulder? Rose. Who is the guy the others turn to on the floor when the seconds are ticking away? Rose. There are some folks who express their feelings verbally and some who punch you in the arm and smile. I guarantee you this: Ask any one of the Wolverines whose praise would mean the most to them. It's Jalen. Over and over. No trespassing "Do you have any recurring dreams?" I ask him. "Well, there's this one. I dream of me being happy." "Happy?" "Yeah, like I'm smiling and everything." "Are you in a big house, or a fancy car?" "No, not so much that, I just see this giant head of me, just smiling and being happy. That's what I dream about." Interesting. Here is a kid who was raised by his mother in the hard side of Detroit, a kid who was told about -- but never met -- his famous basketball-playing father, Jimmy Walker, a formerPistons star. Here was a tall, gawky kid, who saw just about everything you could see in a city, from gangs to bullets, and he also saw that basketball was his token in the turnstile out. So he learned to play. He learned the way they play in the city, with bravado, with talk, with laughter. And when he came to Michigan, he brought all that with him -- and it works. So can you blame him for sticking with it now in the tournament? Sure, maybe it irritates some people. Sure, it might be nice to see Rose play under a tighter leash. But that's us talking, and most of us, let's face it, did not grow up in his shoes. You want Jalen's last-second shot to beat Kansas? You want his overtime against Illinois? You want his alley-oop feeds and body-twisting drives? You want his mini- miracles? Then you must take his makeup, good and bad. "Are you afraid of losing this year?" I ask. "I'm not afraid of anything. Except death." "Why death?" "I can't imagine the world going on without me." He laughs. And in his own way, that makes perfect sense. The general public will never understand this kid. They won't spend the time. But before they join the tongue-clucking cynics this weekend, before they watch maybe their third or fourth college basketball game of the year and draw all these huge conclusions, they should remember one thing about the relationship between Jalen Rose, who lives to play basketball, and the average fan, who does not. He didn't come into your world. You came into his. JALEN ROSE; MAJOR STORY; U-M; BASKETBALL; NCAA