There’s a player on the Chicago Bulls, a player you could legitimately have pointed to a few years ago as the soul of the team, its heartbeat, the gauge of whether things were all right and (or) were going to turn out all right.
This player has endured multiple injuries. His body has been battered and bumped and banged and taken through other Bull-ship.
A Chicago stalwart and — certainly in the past — an indispensable player at times, this man played in an NCAA national championship game. He played against UCLA in the Final Four. He developed an excellent reputation as the kind of player you want to have on your team no matter how grim the situation might be. This player was a puzzle opponents couldn’t easily solve.
The player? Well, Derrick Rose is a perfectly fine and accurate answer, but I was thinking of Joakim Noah, who checks off all those boxes.
The main difference? Unlike Rose, Noah might not have any kind of future left in his body. The tank might be running on empty, though we’ll just have to wait and see (as unsexy as that line always is in a sports conversation).
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This tweet the other day might come as a shock to many of you. It’s a statement which is not easily or reflexively agreed with… but it might not be wrong, either:
Portis can absolutely help the team this year. I'm not sure Noah can. And as always I hate myself for tweeting this.
— Ricky O'Donnell (@SBN_Ricky) October 15, 2015
Don’t focus on whether or not the statement is true. We (meaning “anyone who talks about sports”) often get too wrapped up in who’s right and who’s wrong, instead of realizing that a question’s legitimacy itself — regardless of answer — is in fact the biggest point being made.
Verily, the simple question — “Is Bobby Portis more valuable to the Chicago Bulls in his rookie season than JOAKIM NOAH?” — represents a thunderbolt. It is a jolt to the cognitive realm, something which cuts against what we’ve been conditioned to think and expect in Chicago over the past several years.
Joakim Noah hasn’t just been a very good NBA player; he’s been the kind of player who so transparently helps his team in all the intangible and grunt-work aspects of basketball. He is the often-sung-about unsung hero, the person who finds the spotlight by doing no-glory things, all because of his endless expressiveness and boundless swagger, poured out in generous amounts by one of the most genuine personalities in pro basketball.
Noah has been the coach’s ideal of a treasured player; the guy who will do the off-ball grinding and engage in the trench warfare under the basket to help his team win, all while not littering the stat sheet. Defense, presence, awareness, positioning, attitude, hustle — these are Noah’s defining characteristics on the court. Chicago doesn’t need him to be statistically prolific to succeed, so why is a player who has yet to play one NBA regular-season game — Bobby Portis — more highly regarded than Noah?
It has to be the result of diminished physical capacity, due to a big man lugging around ankles and knees that have been through hell and back.
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Maybe Bobby Portis IS more valuable than Joakim Noah right now. Again, the answer to that question isn’t the point of this piece. What seems a lot more relevant is that if the Bulls want to be a factor in the playoffs, they need to think about Noah in a “Matt Harvey” kind of way. The New York Mets were ambushed by the Scott Boras drama the uber-agent injected into his client’s season. The 180-inning limit for Harvey became an important topic later in the season, not earlier. A miscommunication imperiled all the Mets set out to do, but fortunately, Harvey was able to pitch in the postsesaon and reduce the size of the controversy.
In Chicago, Noah and his agent might laugh at the idea, but if Noah — a team player who will get quite a lot of money regardless — really is interested in helping the Bulls contend for a title, the thought comes to mind: Shouldn’t he sit for a long time to replenish (or at least attempt to replenish) a body worn down by Tom Thibodeau and the demands of professional basketball?
What if Noah’s season began after the All-Star break, and a fresh player played 20 minutes a night for two months?
I ask you: Would the Bulls have a better, fresher, healthier player who would not miss layups at every turn and suffer not because he forgot how to perform, but because his body asked too much of him?
Derrick Rose needs attention and care, and he’ll get them during the season. However, it seems Joakim Noah needs even more attention… and the fresh thinking needed to make him relevant when the 2016 playoffs come around.
