Andre Hamlin was relaxing in the living room of his Chicago home when he noticed the news alert trickle across the screen of his cell phone.
Hamlin, 42, had grown up in the poor, crime-riddled South Side neighborhood of Englewood, Illinois. He, like so many other Englewood kids, had spent time in a gang. But he turned his life around as an adult, beginning community outreach and taking a job as an assistant coach at his alma mater, Simeon Career Academy.
There, he met the younger brother of an old friend, a teenager with an explosive first step and killer crossover named Derrick Rose. The two grew close, and today Andre serves as a member of Rose's security team. He's spent portions of the past decade at Rose's side, still living in the city where he and Rose were raised.
Like so many of his neighbors, Hamlin was proud that the heart and soul and face of the hometown Bulls was one of Englewood's own.
"It meant everything," Hamlin said this week in a phone interview. "He was proof that the way people talk about Englewood, that it's all crime and gangs, isn't the case, and that he was doing that for our team, it ...
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Article written by Yaron Weitzman
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