Jalen Rose is apparently feeling good enough to joke a little bit about his recent layoff from ESPN.
The retired former NBA forward Rose went viral on Friday for a post on Instagram about being dropped by The Worldwide Leader. Rose turned himself into a meme, sharing a current picture of himself looking fresh versus an old picture of himself with a buzz cut from his “Fab Five” era at Michigan. The image read, “Before Layoffs” and “After Layoffs,” and Rose included several laughing-face emojis in his caption.
The joke appears to be that Rose was all iced out with the shades, necklace, and crisp haircut when he was with ESPN. But now he is unemployed and thus not making any salary, just like when he was in college at Michigan.
Rose worked at ESPN since 2007 and had become a face of the network, especially their NBA programming. But he was one of dozens of on-air personalities laid off by ESPN last month (with an awkward moment between Rose and ESPN later surfacing amid the layoff news).
Despite Rose’s jokes, he has already turned himself into a household name in sports media. It shouldn’t be too long before he is back on the air looking sharp again.
More must-reads: