Joakim Noah leaves Bulls’ loss to Nets with left shoulder sprain
The hits just keep on coming for the Chicago Bulls. After back-to-back losses and some eyebrow-raising comments about first-year head coach Fred Hoiberg from All-Star shooting guard Jimmy Butler, Chicago suffered another blow on Monday, losing center Joakim Noah to a left shoulder sprain late in the third quarter of their matchup with the Brooklyn Nets.
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Noah suffered the injury while helping teammate Taj Gibson to defend Brooklyn big man Andrea Bargnani. Noah slapped down on the ball with his left hand, stripping the ball clean, and seemed to get his hand caught on Bargnani’s elbow as the play progressed.
He was instantly and very evidently in serious pain, immediately bending at the waist, favoring his left arm and walking off toward the Bulls bench. He went back to the locker room with the team’s training staff and was quickly ruled out for the remainder of the game, finishing with four points, eight rebounds, a team-high eight assists and two blocks in 16 minutes of playing time before exiting.
The Bulls trailed a Nets team that entered with a record of 7-20 by as many as 12 on Monday, and were down by eight when Noah left the game. They’d make a pair of pushes — a quick burst to get within three early in the fourth quarter, and a 9-2 run late to draw within two with 20.9 seconds remaining — but they couldn’t get over a hump. Brooklyn guard Jarrett Jack made two free throws after a Chicago foul, and Nets center Brook Lopez swatted away a Butler attempt that could’ve gotten the Bulls back within two before hitting his own pair to put Brooklyn up six.
A meaningless Butler triple with one-tenth of a second remaining solidified the 105-102 final, snapping Brooklyn’s five-game losing streak and handing the reeling Bulls their third straight defeat.
Nets were 1-12 on the road (0-9 against teams currently over .500). Doesn’t look like Jimmy Butler’s comments galvanized the Bulls.
— John Schuhmann (@johnschuhmann) December 22, 2015
Butler’s decision after Saturday’s loss to the New York Knicks to call on Hoiberg — whom Bulls brass hired this summer to take over for the fired Tom Thibodeau, offering a change of pace and a different tone of voice after a half-decade of life-or-death hard-charging under Thibs — to coach the Bulls “a lot harder at times” and “hold everybody accountable from the No. 1 player all the way to however many guys we have” came as a surprising shot across the bow, a revelation of the simmering discontent on a team in transition searching for a new identity.
“Internally, there is some consternation over Butler’s emboldened state spilling into selfishness, not to mention puzzlement over his hesitancy to fully embrace Hoiberg’s offense,” wrote K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune.
“Either the Bulls will rally around their All-Star swingman in the wake of his comments and come together more than ever under Hoiberg, or this group will continue to splinter apart as these players, and this coach, continue to struggle to find any consistent unity,” wrote ESPN.com’s Nick Friedell.
Butler said before Monday’s game that he doesn’t regret what he said, though he did allow that he should perhaps have kept his frustrations confined to the Bulls locker room rather than airing his grievances through the media. But while Brooklyn certainly deserves credit for its part in Monday’s result — Lopez (21 points, 12 rebounds, three blocks, two assists, two steals) and Thaddeus Young (16 points, 13 rebounds, three steals, two assists) continue to form one of the league’s most productive frontcourt pairings, while reserves Wayne Ellington (13 points, four rebounds, two assists) and Willie Reed (11 points, five boards) caught Chicago on its heels en route to new season-high scoring totals — this is the sort of game that a serious NBA team’s supposed to win, and it’s hard to take the Bulls seriously right now.
Now that Butler has shined a spotlight on his relationship with Hoiberg and his teammates, every performance will draw more scrutiny. Trailing for almost the entirety of a 48-minute contest against one of the worst teams in the NBA doesn’t seem like it will do very much to rally the troops or get this Bulls team to start looking like anything more than a disappointing collective that’s significantly less than the sum of its parts.
Hoiberg: “It’s a bad, bad loss.”
— K.C. Johnson (@KCJHoop) December 22, 2015
Hoiberg angry with the defense. “We had no togetherness. We had no toughness.”
— Nick Friedell (@NickFriedell) December 22, 2015
Butler: “We weren’t a tough team. We didn’t guard, we didn’t rebound.”
— Sean Highkin (@highkin) December 22, 2015
Butler: “We didn’t do our jobs individually. If you don’t do your job individually you can’t do your job as a team.”
— Sean Highkin (@highkin) December 22, 2015
Pau: “I think it can be improved. To what point, we’ll find out. This has to hurt. If it doesn’t hurt, it might not be correctable.”
— Sean Highkin (@highkin) December 22, 2015
Correcting the issues that plagued the Bulls on Monday — an inability to clear the glass, struggles to execute defensively and finish possessions, a general lack of spark — figures to be even tougher if Noah has to miss some time with his shoulder injury.
The 30-year-old center struggled early in the season to find his place on a changing Bulls roster. Just two years removed from winning Defensive Player of the Year and First-Team All-NBA honors while finishing fourth in MVP voting, Noah has had to work through a demotion from the starting five that wasn’t his idea and trying to figure out how make a major difference in the kind of minor minutes he hasn’t seen since his rookie season.
It hasn’t been easy, but Noah has seemed to find a bit of a niche of late, averaging 6.6 points, 9.9 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 1.5 blocks in 25.4 minutes per game over the past 10 contests before Monday. The energy, the intensity, even the occasional awkward-yet-effective coast-to-coast jaunt — they’ve been there, and they’ve been helpful. There couldn’t be a worse time for the Bulls to lose that burst of vitality and veteran leadership … and yet, that could be what Chicago’s facing.
Joakim Noah’s left arm is in a sling. #Bulls
— Chris Kuc (@ChrisKuc) December 22, 2015
Noah said he heard shoulder pop out, they pushed it back in but X-rays negative. MRI tomorrow.
— K.C. Johnson (@KCJHoop) December 22, 2015
Noah was in pretty good spirits but said “it’s pretty painful.” Doesn’t know how long he’ll be out.
— K.C. Johnson (@KCJHoop) December 22, 2015
“We’re searching, but I think we’re growing,” Noah told Yahoo Sports senior NBA writer Michael Lee last week. “Guys’ roles are changing. Just got to get used to it and come with the right attitude. It’s tough sometimes to get out of yourself for the team and I think that’s where we’re at right now.”
Tuesday’s MRI will make clear just where Noah and his Bulls are at now. For now, all parties involved must sit with the disappointment of another sluggish outing, hope that the Bulls’ longtime emotional leader will continue playing a central role in their ongoing search for consistency, and ward off the worry that they’re going to have to push through the long dark night without him.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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