DETROIT (AP) — Jalen Rose walked through the doors of the high school that bears his name and into the cafeteria, which doubles as a shorter-than-regulation basketball court. He hugged a stream of students as they headed to class and chatted up faculty and staff in the hallways.
The former NBA guard and member of Michigan's Fab Five opened the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy in 2011, four years after retiring from the league. As busy as he is, the 6-foot-8 Rose is a regular in the building and outside when people in the community pull up for free food.
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Former NBA basketball player Jalen Rose hugs a student at the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, Monday, April 20, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Former NBA basketball player Jimmy King, left, talks with Jalen Rose, right, at the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, Monday, April 20, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Former NBA basketball player Jalen Rose talks with students at the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, Monday, April 20, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Former NBA basketball player Jalen Rose talks with students at the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, Monday, April 20, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Former NBA basketball player Jalen Rose hugs a student at the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, Monday, April 20, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
“Jalen is here all the time,” said Jazmine Allen, principal and superintendent of the open enrollment, tuition free public school in Detroit. "I think people think that the school is named after Jalen and he is just a celebrity. He actually is a normal fixture here. He is not just the board president and founder of the school. He works here and doesn’t receive a paycheck.”
Rose was also not paid for a recent speaking opportunity, recently delivering the commencement address at the University of Michigan.
And to him, it was priceless.
“This is actually my, `Mama, I made it' moment,'" he said during his 22-minute speech to the graduates on the covered turf and tens of thousands of people in the stands at Michigan Stadium on May 2.
The 53-year-old Rose was raised by his mother, Jeanne Rose, who died in 2021, and grew up poor in Detroit, where he said she kept a box of unpaid bills tucked away in a closet. He didn't see his father, Jimmy Walker, who was drafted by Detroit No. 1 overall in the 1967 NBA draft, until he attended his funeral in 2007. Walker wore No. 24 during his nine-year career in the league with Detroit, Houston and Kansas City.
Intentionally, Rose wore No. 42 because he wanted to be the opposite of Walker. He helped Detroit Southwestern High School win state championships as a junior and senior in 1990 and 1991, playing on a team with fellow future NBA players Voshon Lenard and Howard Eisley.
Rose was the fifth member of the Fab Five to commit to Michigan, so he wore No. 5 with the Wolverines. He was the point guard and the team's unquestioned leader as it reached the NCAA final in 1992 and 1993 with Chris Webber, Juwan Howard, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson, losing to Duke and then North Carolina.
Rose had the most swagger on perhaps the most charismatic team in the history of college athletics.
“Jalen has always been the mouthpiece for the Fab Five,” King said, standing in a hallway at Rose’s school where Ivy League pennants adorn the walls to inspire students to aim high, cell phone access is limited and the dress code includes blazers, collared shirts and khaki pants. “He's been the one out front for us.”
Rose left Michigan after his junior season and in 2007, shortly after retiring from the league, he earned a degree from the University of Maryland Global Campus.
Denver drafted him No. 13 overall in 1994. He finished 13th in NBA MVP voting in 2000, when he won the Most Improved Player Award. Rose later played with the Indiana Pacers for six seasons and also had stops in Toronto, Chicago, Phoenix and New York while averaging 14-plus points a game during his 13-year career with more than $100 million in earnings.
He has also made significant money as a TV analyst, podcast host and executive producer of the show “South West High,” on Tubi, which is the first project from a multi-media company he launched earlier this year with Pistons owner Tom Gores.
All of this alongside his effort to educate and feed his community in the Motor City at a school that gets limited state funding.
Basketball Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas was so impressed by Rose's efforts that he has donated money, which is recognized by a plaque outside a classroom.
“It would’ve easier for him to say, `I'm going to have a gym to play basketball,' or something recreational for kids to play and have fun,” Thomas said. “Instead, he took on the challenge of opening a school to educate kids and build their minds, as opposed to just building their bodies. He has to raise funds to make all this happen because he's doing it independently."
When Cierra Gee moved from New Jersey to Detroit and chose to attend JRLA, she didn’t recognize the school’s namesake.
“For the first few months I was like, `Who is this tall guy everybody keeps high-fiving?‘” recalled Gee, a senior who said she gained admissions at 37 colleges. “I did not know who he was until my dad came to pick me up one day. He was like, `Oh yeah, that’s Jalen Rose, go get a picture.’ I was like cool peeps. He doesn’t walk around with a sense of entitlement.”
Rose's school is in a former elementary school and he is assessing the logistics and cost of moving it into a former hospital.
“To pour back into the community, it just means everything to me,” Rose said.
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Former NBA basketball player Jalen Rose hugs a student at the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, Monday, April 20, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Former NBA basketball player Jimmy King, left, talks with Jalen Rose, right, at the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, Monday, April 20, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Former NBA basketball player Jalen Rose talks with students at the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, Monday, April 20, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Former NBA basketball player Jalen Rose talks with students at the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, Monday, April 20, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Former NBA basketball player Jalen Rose hugs a student at the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, Monday, April 20, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday said the Iran ceasefire is on “life support” after he rejected the country’s latest proposal for not including a nuclear concession.
Asked if the ceasefire was still in place, Trump said he’d say it’s “unbelievably weak” and on “life support.”
“I would call it the weakest right now after reading that piece of garbage they sent us,” Trump said during an unrelated appearance in the Oval Office. “I didn’t even finish reading it.”
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran and the United States were at an impasse again Monday over how to end their war while their ceasefire grew increasingly shaky, with the two sides exchanging fire in recent days, ships and Gulf states being targeted, and fighting flaring between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
The volatility could tip the Middle East back into open warfare and prolong the worldwide energy crisis sparked by the conflict, with Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz and America’s blockade of Iranian ports still in place. U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to use a trip this week to China to urge Chinese President Xi Jinping to pressure Iran into making concessions and end the limbo. Beijing is the biggest buyer of the Islamic Republic’s sanctioned crude oil, giving it leverage.
But getting to any deal likely remains tough work. Iran insists it wants to see the American blockade end and sanctions lifted before beginning negotiations over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. The U.S. — and Israel — want that material removed since it could be used to eventually build a bomb, should Iran choose to do so. Tehran insists its program is peaceful, but it has enriched uranium beyond the levels needed for civilian power generation.
Trump said Sunday that Iran’s response to his latest proposal was “TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!” Ending the U.S. blockade before discussing Iran’s nuclear program would eliminate a major point of leverage.
In the meantime, the standoff over the strait, a key transit point for the world's oil and natural gas exports, has sent fuel prices skyrocketing and rattled world markets.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who launched the war with Trump on Feb. 28, insisted that the conflict was “not over,” telling CBS’ “60 Minutes” in an interview that aired Sunday that a critical goal is getting the nuclear material out of Iran. If that can't be accomplished with negotiations, Netanyahu said that Israel and the U.S. agree “we can reengage them militarily.”
Netanyahu also said the current Iranian government's "days are numbered — but it could take a lot of days.”
The U.S. and Israel have killed dozens of high-ranking Iranian officials, including the country’s supreme leader in the opening salvos of the war, and the conflict has inflicted heavy damage to Iran’s economy, but its theocracy maintains its grip on power.
Trump quickly rejected a new Iranian proposal sent Sunday to him via Pakistan. In it, Iran demanded war reparations from the U.S., full Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, an end to sanctions and the release of its seized assets abroad, Iranian state television reported.
Iran also called for an immediate end to the war, including the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah — which have repeatedly exchanged fire though technically in a ceasefire. That conflict has seen Israeli strikes in Lebanon, its occupation of Lebanese territory and deadly Hezbollah attacks, including one that killed another Israeli soldier, the Israeli military said Monday.
“We did not demand any concessions — the only thing we demanded was Iran’s legitimate rights," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said Monday. “The American side still insists on its one-sided views and unreasonable demands.”
Iran did, however, offer to dilute part of its highly enriched uranium and transport the rest to a third country, and called for 30-day negotiations to finalize details, two regional officials involved in the negotiations told The Associated Press. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive diplomacy taking place.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered to take the uranium from Iran.
Russia runs Iran's sole nuclear power plant at Bushehr and also took some of Iran's uranium stockpile in Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, which the U.S. later withdrew from under the first Trump administration.
Asked Monday about Putin's comments, Baghaei said: “At the current stage, our focus is on ending the war."
Meanwhile, Iran executed another man it accused of spying for both the CIA and Israel's Mossad intelligence service. Iran's state-run IRNA news agency identified the prisoner as Erfan Shakourzadeh, saying he had worked on satellite communications and relayed classified information to those intelligence services.
Iran has carried out a string of executions since nationwide protests swept the country in January. Activist groups have long accused Iran of carrying out closed-door trials during which defendants are unable to fully defend themselves. Iran's judiciary chief has repeatedly said that Tehran would increase the speed with which it carried out hangings to fight back against its enemies at home and abroad.
Magdy reported from Cairo.
Vehicles drive past banners showing portraits of the school children who were killed during a strike on a school in southern town of Minab on Feb. 28, at Tajrish square in northern Tehran, Iran, Sunday, May 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Women grieve as they carry the body of 6-month-old Mariam Fahos during a funeral procession for people killed a day earlier in an Israeli airstrike in the village of Saksakieh, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Sunday, May 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
The front page of the Sunday May 10, 2026, edition of Iranian newspaper, Jamejam, is seen with a cartoon satirizing the U.S. President Donald Trump that asks: "Open the the Strait of Hormuz" on a news stand in northern Tehran, Iran, Sunday, May 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A man waves an Iranian flag for a pro-government campaign under a billboard with graphic showing Strait of Hormuz and sewn lips of U.S. President Donald Trump in a square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Motorbikes drive past a billboard with graphic showing the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the U.S. and Israel strikes on Feb. 28, with his framed fist amongst his supporters framed fists in downtown Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)