You Tellem, Rose

I am not shocked to read the plethora of clippings that claim Derrick Rose is done with his workout tour after only showing his skills off to the Bulls.  I was also not blown away when I read Rose politicking more than Barack Obama and John McCain in an effort to have Chicago sign the hometown boy with the first overall pick.  In fact, with all the recent publicity that Rose, his family, and his agents are receiving, I was most surprised to read this,

“When I signed with (agent) Arn Tellem, we were in a room,” Rose said. “He was like, ‘Which team do you want to play for?’ And he was like, ‘I know your hometown.’ Everybody in the room started laughing because we thought it was impossible. That night when the Bulls got the No. 1 pick, I was looking at the TV like this can’t be true.”

Arn Tellem?  But B.J. Armstrong is Rose’s primary agent.  Sure, Arn is also an agent at WMG and probably shares adjacent office space to B.J., but all previous signs seemed to show that B.J. was in control of this situation from day one.  I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing B.J. Armstrong and hope to follow up with him again sometime soon.  In the interview, this dialogue went down:

Me: Is there any particular reason that Derrick Rose picked you as his primary agent over Arn Tellem?

BJ Armstrong: Again, I think that Derrick chose me largely because I played in Chicago and he grew up in Chicago watching me play. There was a time in Chicago where I played on some pretty good teams. The things that happened in that city as he was growing up probably left a mark on him. Again, I believe that I was the beneficiary of good timing. Derrick and I even played the same position. Sometimes things just line up…you can’t plan it. I think we just had a few similarities in our background that made it all work out for a lot of different reasons.

Interesting that Arn was never mentioned.  It seems like good old Arn may have had more to do with Rose’s bond to WMG than I had originally assumed.  Anyway, it seems like it is almost a lock that Rose will be the first name called next week.  I cannot wait to share the joy with B.J. and the WMG family.  They have quite a team and a solid young talent in B.J. who will be sure to continue to make headlines in the future.