Joakim Noah played 22 minutes yesterday, and 23 minutes in the previous contest. However, he’s just not truly himself. Noah is active, but the he’s the Noah we know and love who was first team All-NBA and the league’s Defensive Player of the Year.
Joakim Noah has entirely missed 12 of 46 games this season, and the Chicago Bulls miss him. Like the deserts miss the rain. (credit the late ’90s Saturday Night Live re-occurring character “Mango” who made that song popular)
ESPN on ABC Lead NBA Analysts Marc Jackson and Jalen Rose. They did a media conference call this week, and I asked them what to make of the Chicago Bulls recent slide and if the worries exhibited by the Chicago Bulls community are indeed justified.
Podcast is below:
As Jalen Rose points out, Joakim Noah is the Bulls coach on the floor and extremely critical to what they do. The Bulls have piled up some losses to sub .500 teams and it’s due to the issues on defense.
“They miss Noah, and if there’s an extension of a coach on the floor it’s him,” said Rose.
“He drives what they do on both ends of the floor. He is their source of energy.”
Right now the Bulls are lacking their identity. They have gotten away from what works for them, and that’s being defense first. They need the fully healthy Joakim Noah of 2013-14 to get there.
For what it’s worth, Jalen Rose stuck to his guns on his preseason Bulls prediction. He said later on the call that he believes Chicago will represent the Eastern Conference in the NBA Finals; just like he said in the preseason call.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with Fox Sports Digital, eBay, Google News and CBS Interactive.
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