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First things first, “Pooh” is not a documentary.

“It started out as a documentary, but it became a film about this kid’s journey,” the movie’s director Scott Diener told me after a screening of the movie at the ArcLight Cinemas in Chicago on Tuesday night.

If you go into “Pooh: The Derrick Rose Story,” which premieres on Stadium on Thursday night, with that in mind, you might enjoy it.

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You might love it. You might hate it. You might ignore it. It all depends on how you already feel about Rose, the Chicago icon who thrilled and frustrated fans during his eight seasons with the Bulls.

The movie is not a documentary because Rose is an executive producer of the film, which was the brainchild of his agent B.J. Armstrong, who came up with the idea to film Rose in the summer of 2016 and later pitched it to Stadium. So in that sense, this isn’t a completely impartial look at his life. But in another sense, what’s wrong with an athlete taking some control over how his story is told? Throughout the film, I reminded myself of the context, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t enthralled by what I saw and what I heard.

The majority of interviews done are complimentary to Rose, as is the general narrative of the movie. It’s a movie about him, done for him. But it’s not just people kissing his ass. Family, friends, coaches, teammates, reporters and Rose himself tell the story of his life.

One of the most engaging scenes is when Rose finds out he’s getting traded to the Knicks while he’s filming an interview with the camera crew he and Armstrong hired. Rose sheds tears when he gets the news, one of many times someone cries on camera in this movie, and then returns to the interview.

Diener, the vice president of production at Stadium, the Chicago-based digital television company and streaming network co-owned by Jerry Reinsdorf’s Silver Chalice Partners, said Rose saw chunks of the movie as they were finished, but his only instructions were to make it honest. I think Stadium did the best they could, given the obvious constraints. For one, it wasn’t like they could just hammer the Bulls for how the injury issues shook out, given the obvious ties. (Stadium is headquartered in the United Center annex.)

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Regardless of any flaws, if you were or are a Rose fan, or just a reporter who watched his story unfold over the last decade, you should find this movie engrossing. I didn’t check my phone for the entire run time, which, if you know me, says a lot. There was plenty of footage that I remember (I make a few cameos in media scrums and press conferences) and behind-the-scenes footage that was new to me.

If anything, this movie is a time capsule to an important sporting era in Chicago. I started writing a column for the newly launched ESPN Chicago during the tail end of Rose’s rookie season and for the ensuing six seasons, writing about Rose was my No. 1 beat. 

Is this movie a precursor to Rose rejoining the Bulls? Armstrong, who was reticent to give interviews about Rose during his first Bulls tour, is now ubiquitous on every podcast and radio show promoting this movie. And he recently said Rose would certainly listen to the Bulls this summer. (What agent would say a client won’t listen to offers?) A source close to Rose told me the same thing Tuesday.

I think that would be a mistake for a number of reasons. Rose should finish his career as a Chicago expat — since going back to Minnesota, he has shown he still has plenty of years left in the tank — and try to win a championship and keep banking money elsewhere. Can he be a sixth man in Chicago? Would fans deal with the nagging injuries that pop up? Does he need to revisit the past so soon?

His Chicago run, particularly the good parts, should exist as it does now, in lore, in stories we can tell ourselves and memories that will resonate over time. 

He doesn’t need a Dwyane Wade farewell tour and Bulls fans don’t need Rose to be the central character in their future. I don’t judge Rose’s career as a disappointment, as crushing as his injuries were to the collective psyche of the city and the team’s fans. He was Rookie of the Year, the youngest MVP, a three-time All-Star. Everyone thought he was going to be Michael Jordan, but he turned into Gale Sayers. 

I enjoyed Rose’s return to the UC this year, with fans chanting MVP as he toasted his old team. I think that’s how they should leave it.

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For a lot of people reading this, I’m burying the lede, the deflating reality of Rose’s current legacy puffing-up.

Yes, the movie does address his civil sexual assault case and trial. No, it’s not a very long portion of the movie. It’s a concise accounting of the case and it was jarring when it popped up on the screen. Diener and his staff used news clippings, a New York TV clip (he was already on the Knicks when it went to trial in the fall of 2016), along with a Rose interview to tell this part of his story.

Diener admitted that was a difficult scene considering the circumstances.

“We knew we had to be extremely sensitive in every second of that sequence,” Diener said. “We wanted to show it in its rawest form.”

When he says “sensitive,” Diener said he didn’t just mean sensitive to Rose. Diener said there were discussions in the office on how to make sure they were being respectful to Jane Doe, the woman who accused Rose and his friends of sexually assaulting her in her Los Angeles apartment after a party at Rose’s summer rental house.

Diener said the production team’s main goal of that scene was to show Rose talking about why he wanted to go to trial and his thought process at the time. An independent documentary would have explored more points of view, of course, and likely pushed back on Rose’s statement in the movie that he has never “disrespected a woman.” Rose admitted to having sex with Jane Doe, whom he casually dated long-distance, with two of his friends at the same time. That’s not exactly respect.

That he was found not liable wasn’t treated as a validation or a celebration. This case was just treated as part of his story.

The reporters and radio hosts they picked to talk about the Derrick Rose Experience were fair, not always positive and enlightening. K.C. Johnson, Sam Smith (in full Sam gesticulation mode, waving his warms and raising his voice), Vinny Goodwill, Laurence Holmes, David Kaplan, Marc Silverman and Tom Waddle gave the movie some texture.

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Rose’s family talked at length, with his three brothers and mother Brenda giving background info on Rose’s life and his difficulties expressing himself. There was loud cackling from Rose’s family and friends in attendance during one scene, where after Derrick talks about his brother Alan’s drug dealing past, Alan pops up on the screen and says, “I don’t want to talk about that.” They also cracked up when footage of Charles Barkley telling Reggie Rose to shut up was played.

Reggie Rose, the public-facing brother who caused a major stir during his ACL rehab (the film recounts it well and I must add I’ve always enjoyed talking him and respected his honesty), also shares a story no one has heard before about a serious pre-draft question the Bulls had for Derrick. (I won’t spoil it, but Reggie starts bawling.)

I’m biased, but my favorite voice in the movie is Joakim Noah, who gives a lot of insight on Derrick the person and player. I think by virtue of his upbringing and status in life, Noah is a skilled observer of people and he knows Derrick as well as anyone.

Noah even admitted the Bulls were taken aback when Rose made that infamous “I want to be able to walk at my son’s graduation” comment during his second rehab, but he also knew that while “Derrick said crazy shit,” he was a guy you want in “your foxhole.”

Noah made another comment that stayed with me. During Rose’s initial ACL rehab, the one that essentially (and in my mind, unfairly) ruined his public image, Noah said he was just like us. He “selfishly” wanted Rose to come back for his own good fortune, even though he should’ve been pushing him to listen to his body. Noah said he doesn’t like to think about that time, because he doesn’t like himself for having those thoughts.

We all wanted Rose to come back that season, which is why the outcry was so loud when he didn’t. As a young ESPN writer, every Rose story I came up with would get front-page billing on ESPN.com. This was my way to further my career, so of course, I wrote columns about his imminent comeback. It made me feel important. I was a part of the ride.

I think the movie should’ve spent even more time on that 2010-11 Rose phenomenon. It was the most enjoyable season of any team I’ve ever covered, including the 2005 White Sox, the 2009-10 Blackhawks and the 2016 Cubs. The Bulls were everything the city wants out of a team that season, led by Rose, who took the MVP award away from LeBron James, who had spurned Chicago for Miami. He was a civic hero.

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That’s why his ACL tear the next postseason was so shocking to everyone. Noah said, “it was almost like somebody died.” Hope of a championship, of one-upping LeBron, died with Rose’s knee.

Because so many people’s happiness and livelihoods depended on Rose, that meant the pressure was so great on him to come back that next season and take the Bulls back to the top. It was an obsession in the city. Years later, we seem so foolish.

“We weren’t focused on the right things,” Chance the Rapper said in the film.

A longer documentary might have fully explored how a lot of people screwed up off the court during that time, failing to explain Rose’s rehab status and not having the sense to just tell everyone there was a good chance he wouldn’t come back. The lack of communication between Armstrong and the Bulls — and the organization’s need for secrecy — wound up killing Rose’s image. (Derrick and Reggie didn’t help by not talking and talking, respectively, during that time.) 

Rose now says, “It was my decision” not to play. It would have saved him a lot of grief to control the message back then. But he was young and hurt and emotionally vulnerable. It’s a shame he got crushed for being human, but I was there, mistakes were made.

But even if everyone were open and honest, that second knee injury still would’ve happened.

The film also explores what happened next, the season-ending injury in Portland, fans turning on him in Chicago, the media doubting him, his fragile emotional state, the trade, the weird disappearance with the Knicks. Like with any documentary cut to time (this is only 90 minutes), an educated viewer leaves with questions about what was left out and elided.

Honestly, the Derrick Rose Story could be a mini-series. So much happened and so much could be dissected through his life. Goodwill, who covered the Bulls for CSN/NBC Sports Chicago after Rose’s peak, gave one of the most powerful quotes of the film, saying, “The segregation of Chicago met at Derrick Rose.”

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That line, in and of itself, could be its own book, its own movie. Rose’s upbringing is talked about at length — Rose even mentions the one memory he has of his father — and it’s some of the best parts of the movie.

Race and class and geography can’t be overlooked when it comes to how people felt about Rose during his Bulls career and how they remember him today. Rose really is Chicago, isn’t he?

During his heyday, I often felt like the mainstream white-dominated press (myself included) used Englewood for dramatic purposes to better our stories. But how could most of us understand what it was really like for Rose to grow up there? Around that time, Rose told me and a couple reporters the player he most looked up to as a kid was Jannero Pargo. Weird, right? But it made perfect sense to me. Pargo was a normal-sized baller from Englewood who left to play college ball and made the NBA. That’s the dream.

As biased as I am about my fondness for covering Rose during his rise, I went into this movie expecting the worst, but I found myself transfixed by Rose’s story all over again.

This isn’t a perfect movie, but it’s one worthy of your consideration. Just like Rose himself.

(Top photo: Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)

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