Wish granted

Wish granted

Before the game, Rose met a 13-year-old fan from nearby Kissimmee who recently wrote a letter to him detailing how he nearly died in a bicycle accident and how looking at a poster of Rose above his bed helped him focus on getting better.

Rose took photos with Isaiah Walter and his family and took him into the locker room to meet the rest of the Bulls.

Derrick Rose did his pregame shooting and a little hosting as he was taken with a young man named Isaiah Walter, who was wearing a Bulls Rose jersey and was serving as a ballboy for the game. Walter suffered serious head injuries in a bike accident in which his head hit the ground and helmet flew off. He had a picture of Rose placed on the ceiling of his hospital room and told Rose whenever things were bad he’d look up at Rose’s picture for inspiration. “I looked up to you on that ceiling and would close my eyes and hear you tell me, ‘Let’s go, get up and get your ball,’” Walter wrote Rose in a letter which set up the meeting with Rose before the game. “On that same day, I told my parents to teach me how to walk again. I learned how to put one foot in front of the other, which was really hard being my mind forgot how to do this. It took me two days to get my balance but I did it, with you by my side telling me, keep going so you can get back on the court. I did all this without therapy, only with God, my parents and you on my side.”