Miller invaded the Bulls’ practice facility last week to nominate Rose as Chicago’s sexiest athlete on behalf of Victoria’s Secret, yet Rose didn’t appear shy about the honor.

“Everybody was telling me about her,” Rose said of Miller, who was on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s 2008 Swimsuit Issue. “And then I was seeing pictures of her and I was like, man, she’s been doing pretty good.”

The NBA Rookie of the Year launches his second season Thursday amid expectations that Rose will fast join Chris Paul, Deron Williams and Tony Parker among the league’s top point guards. On opening night in Chicago, he will face Parker, who has already achieved everything Rose wants and yet remains hungry for more. The following night, Rose will return to Boston for a rematch with Rajon Rondo, who nearly averaged a triple-double last postseason while prevailing in their remarkable seven-game series.

Rose’s minutes may be tempered by a preseason right ankle injury (to the posterior tibialis tendon, if you must know) that has him mired at 80 percent, by his calculations. But the elites have a way of making injuries seem incidental, though it’s never as easy or painless as they make it appear.

How does a 21-year-old like Rose indulge the spotlight while continuing to sacrifice himself for the good of the team? Each of the great point guards has managed the dichotomy between his need to become a star and the needs of the team. As famous as they become, they don’t lose sight of their larger purpose on the floor to create opportunities for others. Rose’s teammates see those values in Rose, and they trust he won’t let them down.

“You’ve really got to credit his brothers,” Bulls center Joakim Noah said of Dwayne, Reggie and Allan Rose, all older than Derrick. “They’ll be in here in the summertime just playing 21 or shooting around, and they’re really tough on him, and I think that’s good. They’re not going to hype him up, they’re not going to believe the hype one bit, and even if they were, they’re not going to let him know anyway.”

As we talked, Noah was sitting on a courtside table watching the model and the point guard greet each other for the sake of the gathered cameras. Miller handed Rose a Bulls jersey that read SEXY above his number.

“Don’t let that get to your head!” Noah shouted as Rose waved back to him. “Relax, man.”

Rose spent the summer detailing his jump shot after shooting 22.2 percent from the three-point line, a necessary improvement for someone who will be expected to build on his 16.8-point average last season now that Ben Gordon has moved to Detroit.

“His shooting was a point of emphasis, and he put a lot of time in,” said general manager Gar Forman, whose second-floor office overlooks the practice court. “You come in here in the summer, and it’s not surprising that he’s in here at 10 or 11 at night getting shots up.”

One lesson Rose will be preaching this season is to not misjudge his humility as weakness. Alarmingly quiet as a rookie, he has been learning to raise his voice in order to express leadership. But he isn’t likely to get carried away with it.

“My mom would not let that happen,” Rose said. “She would kill me if I [went] around talking about how I’m better than someone or acting a certain way toward somebody.”

Some NBA players have difficulty playing in their hometown. But Rose thrives on being a Bull, joining his favorite team as the No. 1 pick just two years after he led Chicago’s Simeon High School to the state championship (while scoring two points in the title game).

“Everywhere you go, you always have people looking, or people are always in your business, so that’s the hardest thing,” he said. “But playing-wise, it’s great.”

Rose has developed a sense for when — and when not to — engage with strangers.

“I have to see how the person is,” he said. “I don’t like to be around anything negative. I think the negative stuff will bring negative energy toward you. So if you got anything negative, I’ll see you another day — I’ll say hi to you, and that will be about it. Hanging out and all that stuff, that will never happen; I don’t hang around with people who don’t have anything going for themselves. They won’t know I’m disrespecting them, it won’t be disrespect. They’ll just know that it will never be a close relationship.”

Then there are other times in the company of his mother, Brenda, when fans will approach Rose at a restaurant.

“I’ll tell them, I’m with my family, will they wait until after I get done,” Rose said. “But if my mom is there she’ll go, ‘Oh, go ahead and sign … go ahead and talk to them.’ ”

A lot of good meals have gone cold that way, he said.

“When I was younger, I wasn’t used to it, so I’d be kind of angry, like, man, what am I supposed to do?” he said. “But I realize there aren’t too many people in my shoes. I should be grateful and thankful for what God put in front of me.”

Rose’s perspective is bound to change as he grows more famous and his public image becomes more valuable and measured. He had a difficult summer when a photograph was released of him flashing gang signs with friends (he said he was joking around) and he was accused of having someone take a standardized text on his behalf to gain eligibility as a freshman at Memphis (Rose insisted that he took the test).

Those incidents have little bearing on his teammates’ view of their leader.

“The most special thing about Derrick is the way he dealt with his whole rookie situation,” Noah said. “That’s something so underrated. To be the No. 1 pick and play for your hometown, for a team that had not a lot of expectations — he had the world on his shoulders. There are very few players in the league who could have dealt with [those demands] the way he dealt with them … to put that all to the side and really focus on the team. It’s hard in this league to find people who are all about the right things, and to me he’s one of those guys.”

That’s why, according to Noah, there is a sense from Rose’s teammates that they must not strand him, but instead help him to carry the Bulls up the standings.

“It’s not just on D-Rose,” he said. “It’s all of our responsibility to step up and to help him contribute.”

Which is good news for a team-first point guard, as Lennon and McCartney once put it: The love you make is equal to the love you take.

Owen’s 96th minute winner at Old Trafford left Manchester City livid.

As the row over the near seven minutes of added time accorded to United to win the Manchester derby with a last-gasp Michael Owen goal continues, the Guardian newspaper probed the official injury-time statistics.

They looked at league matches at United’s Old Trafford ground since the start of the 2006-07 season and revealed that, on average, there has been over a minute of extra time added by referees when the English champions do not have the lead.

This is compared to when they are in front, but United have a reputation for scoring late goals on their ways to claiming three straight Premier League crowns.

In 48 games when Alex Ferguson’s men were in front, the average amount of stoppage time was 191.35 seconds.

In 12 matches when United were drawing or losing there was an average of 257.17 seconds.

In mitigation, the study revealed that the average stoppage time added at Old Trafford is below that at the home grounds of top four rivals Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea.

The Steinbrenners are surely happy they authorized Cashman to spend the money. There may be no better choice for the American League most valuable player than Teixeira, who bashed a tie-breaking leadoff home run in the ninth inning Friday to lift the Yankees to a 4-2 victory against the Seattle Mariners at Safeco Field.

“We’ve put ourselves in a good position, and I’ve fit in really well with this team and had a great time,” Teixeira said. “Hopefully I can stay healthy and keep producing, because we’re having a lot of fun right now on this team.”

The Yankees are flying, with 22 victories in 28 games since the All-Star break to move to 73-43, a season-high 30 games over .500. Teixeira has pointed them there, leading the league in total bases and extra-base hits. He ranks second in home runs (30) and is tied for second in runs batted in (86).

He has run the bases well, played exceptional defense — helping Andy Pettitte to a pickoff with a strong throw in the fourth inning Friday — and generally performed even better than the Yankees expected.

“You could read about the numbers, but when you watch a guy every day, you really realize how good he is,” Manager Joe Girardi said of Teixeira. “I knew he was a great player, but when you see him do all the things he does, you realize what a great player he is and how many things he can do as a baseball player.”

Teixeira’s home run on Friday came off a 1-1 changeup from reliever Mark Lowe. Robinson Cano then doubled with two outs and scored on a single by Nick Swisher, giving a two-run lead to closer Mariano Rivera, who earned his 34th save in 35 chances.

Teixeira, who broke a tie with a homer off Boston’s hard-throwing Daniel Bard last Saturday, said he was judicious about trying for a home run. But this was the right situation to do it.

“I try not to do it every single at-bat; I’d probably be hitting .200 right now,” said Teixeira, who is batting .288. “But you give yourself a shot against a really good pitcher in the ninth inning. So I’d say every couple of games, when I have a chance to change a game with a home run.”

Teixeira continued: “There’s nothing better in sports, I think, than a game-winning home run. And when you hit that home run and you have Mo coming out the next half-inning, you feel like it’s a walk-off, because he’s been so lockdown this year.”

Rivera was unavailable Wednesday because of a tired shoulder, and he was not needed in the Yankees’ blowout victory here Thursday. He threw just nine pitches to get three groundouts and finish Friday’s game.

Pettitte worked the first six innings, striking out 10, a season high. He needed 111 pitches to do it and said he would rather have fewer strikeouts and more innings pitched. But he continued his pattern since the All-Star break: his cutter was too sharp for the hitters to handle.

“I don’t want to strike out 10 guys,” Pettitte said. “Today I didn’t feel great with my command, but I felt like I had decent stuff. I want to really locate a little more and get outs a little quicker, but I go with what I’ve got, and it was good to shut them down after the first inning.”

The Mariners have scored the fewest runs in the American League, and after the first inning, they did not move a runner past second base.

Ichiro Suzuki and Franklin Gutierrez blitzed Pettitte with singles in the first, and a double by Jose Lopez scored Suzuki. A groundout by Ken Griffey Jr. brought in Gutierrez and moved Lopez to third.

From that point, Pettitte was in control. He struck out Russell Branyan and Jack Hannahan, both on cutters, to end the inning. He struck out two more in the second, one in the fourth, three in the fifth — including Suzuki on an especially wicked cutter — and two in the sixth.

Pettitte left with the game tied, 2-2, the Yankees managing only three hits in seven innings off Ryan Rowland-Smith.

In the second inning, Jorge Posada doubled off the yellow line atop the wall in right-center field. He moved to third on a groundout, and with two outs, Jerry Hairston Jr. grounded to third.

Lopez, playing second base, had trouble pulling the ball from the aqua-colored webbing of his glove for a potential double play. His throw to first bounced late, allowing the Yankees’ first run to score. Rowland-Smith retired the next nine hitters.

With two out in the fifth, Melky Cabrera reached on an infield single to third and took second on a wild pitch. That was crucial, because it allowed him score when Derek Jeter’s grounder slipped between the third baseman and the shortstop.

Again, the Yankees scratched out a run without much offense, and immediately went dormant. Rowland-Smith faced seven more hitters and retired them all, and Lowe worked a 1-2-3 eighth inning.

Pettitte was gone by then, but the improving Brian Bruney blanked the Mariners in the seventh, and Phil Hughes did the same in the eighth, though it was not easy.

With two outs and the bases empty, Hughes, 23, faced Griffey, 39. He could not put him away, pumping four two-strike fastballs that Griffey fouled off.

“I play his Super Nintendo video game every day when we’re at home,” Hughes said. “He’s a guy I grew up watching. It’s cool to face guys like that. Those are the kind of guys you can tell your kids about, that you played against.”

Hughes was not intimidated, but Griffey held off his challenge, drawing a 10-pitch walk that prompted a visit from the pitching coach, Dave Eiland.

Hughes said he had told Eiland he was struggling with his cutter to lefties, concerned it might move too much and hit the batter. So he offered only four-seam fastballs to the dangerous Branyan, walking him to bring up Hannahan, who struck out on a 95 mile-an-hour fastball to end the inning.

It brought Teixeira to the bat rack to lead off the top of the ninth, with a home run on his mind and the skill to follow through.