The Bernstein Brief: Joakim Noah Story Isn't About Noah
By Dan Bernstein--
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(CBS) The Bulls are a mess, both on the court and off. And big man Joakim Noah is smart enough to know to stay away from it.
That's the important takeaway from Joe Cowley's report in the Chicago Sun Times earlier this week that too few seem to understand. Whether the Bulls could re-sign Noah is entirely not the point -- he's an aging center who can't score, left with only one knee that has enough cartilage in it to work properly.
His vaunted "leadership" can cut both ways in a bad locker room beset by factionalism and infighting, with such strong personalities contributing to any divide. Noah is telling people he's done with the Bulls because he knows that they have yet to solve the problem between a former superstar and a guy who thinks he is one, have yet to stop a paranoid general manager from creating a distrustful working environment and have yet to prove that the GM's hand-picked coach knows what he's doing.
The story is Noah's complete and correct awareness of the totality of Bulls' dysfunction. It has nothing to do with where he actually plays next year or doesn't.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Boers and Bernstein Show" in afternoon drive. You can follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.
