Mike Celizic

I know there’s a lot of garment-rending and teeth-gnashing going on in Chicago over whom the team should take with the first pick in the NBA draft, Derrick Rose or Michael Beasley. But this is a pick that shouldn’t take more than 10 seconds for the team’s brain trust to come to agreement on, and that includes deciding what to order for lunch.

Take Derrick Rose. There, it’s settled. Rose is a Chicago kid whose childhood dream remains his adulthood dream. He wants to play for the Bulls, lusts to play for the Bulls, would do anything to play for the Bulls. I know that some people think that could be a bad situation. The kid could put too much pressure on himself and choke. But Rose doesn’t seem like he’s got problems dealing with pressure. He’s a great athlete, and if he doesn’t have the greatest jump shot, well, neither did that Michael Jordan fellow when he came up.

And everybody admits there’s no clear-cut No. 1 this year. Beasley is a forward and a great talent. Rose is a guard with great talent. The Bulls could use help at both positions. Everybody says they’re going to take one or the other.

So why not take the guy with the built-in incentive? Why not the guy who has said that they had better have paramedics at the draft to revive him if the Bulls call his name with the first pick? If you think the talent level of both guys is nearly equal, go with the guy who really wants to play for you. It just makes sense.

The last team who took a player with that kind of desire was Cleveland, and LeBron James seems to have held up under the pressure of playing for the home crowd.

"I thought LeBron James was the luckiest guy in the world to get to play in his home city," Rose is reported to have told NBA.com. "Now I have that chance. I'm just hoping that they pick me."

He won two straight state championships playing high school ball in the South Side. He remembers Jordan playing for the Bulls.

“"Now, I'm just frantic. I can't wait for them to call my name. I don't care which team, but … the Bulls. I hope they call my name. I hope I become a Chicago Bull,” he told reporters in Chicago.

And here’s what the Sun-Times reported him saying: “I would love to play here. It's a dream come true to get to bring the Bulls back to where they're supposed to be. I haven't thought about the [negatives]. I've just thought about the positives.''

If there were a clear-cut No. 1, a player so far above the crowd there’s no question that the team with the top pick has to take him, I’d look at this differently. But given the inexact science that is the draft, that’s not often the case, even when we all think that’s the case.

The draft is littered with can’t-miss No. 1s who turned out to be can’t-hit. Joe Barry Carroll, Michael Olowakandi, Kwame Brown, Pervis Ellison, Kenyon Martin, Derrick Coleman and Danny Manning are among them. When they were drafted, there was great rejoicing. Some of them even had some decent talent. But none of them turned into great players, and many of them are disasters.

Meanwhile, among the players who weren’t drafted No. 1 are Kobe Bryant, Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade and Chris Paul, just to name an all-star team.

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Neither Rose nor Beasley is a No. 1 like James was, or like Shaquille O’Neal, Allen Iverson, David Robinson, Patrick Ewing, Magic Johnson or Tim Duncan. So quit agonizing over it and take the guy who really, really wants it.

After all, general managers are the first to admit that the draft is an inexact science. If everything were as obvious as the analysts would have you believe, every No. 1 choice would go straight to the Hall of Fame and you’d never land the greatest player ever with, say, the third pick in the draft, which is where the Bulls found Jordan.

Rose has been smart enough not to bad-mouth Miami, in case the Bulls pass on him and he ends up with the Heat. In fact, he said he’d love to be in Pat Riley’s organization and share a court with Dwyane Wade.

But Chicago’s his home and playing for the Bulls is his childhood dream. The NBA isn’t the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and I’m not saying the Bulls should take him just because it would make he and his mom really, really happey. But he’s worthy of the top pick, he plays a position the Bulls need major help at, and he’s got a huge well of desire.

We keep whining about players who don’t want it badly enough. In Chicago, that shouldn’t be a problem with Derrick Rose.

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