Derrick Rose was not getting stitches. No way. No how.
You see, Rose has a fear of needles. No, make that a debilitating phobia of them.
He was told he needed as many as four stitches to close a gash above his right eye after a collision during Memphis' 92-74 victory over Michigan State on Friday.
Rose came stalking out of the locker room, yelling and on the verge of tears. He only calmed down when team officials agreed to glue the cut and forget the stitches.
"I'm terrified of needles," he said. "If I would have got stitches, they would have had to stick a needle right above my eye. So I was pouting, stormed out of the locker room. I was mad."
Rose isn't sure what brought on this fear, but he remembers a childhood event that didn't help.
When he was 7, a child ran over his head with a bike, causing a large wound on the back of his head.
"The nurses at the hospital were holding him down and he was so scared he broke away from them and got up," his mother, Brenda Rose, said. "So they had to tape him to the gurney and do the stitches."
