Bulls' top pick Noah is lifelong fan of Knicks
Joakim Noah has always been a fashion risk-taker. Long before the big-haired big man wowed NBA commissioner David Stern with his seersucker suit on draft day, he was traipsing around Gainsville in what one blogger referred to as his "man-dress."
Yet, for all his fashion daring, there is one thing that Joakim Noah swore for years that he never would wear: a Chicago Bulls jersey.
Yes, the man whom the Bulls made the ninth pick in June's draft was once a die-hard Knicks fan. Joakim Noah grew up just 10 blocks from Madison Square Garden, cheering for Patrick Ewing and John Starks and Charles Oakley. He was one of the hardcores who stuck around until the end of games so he could chant for backup center Herb Williams.
"I loved the Knicks. Michael Jordan made me cry," Joakim Noah said in an interview last week. "I remember being in France and waking up at 3 o'clock to watch the Knicks. And Michael would get 50 on us and hit the game-winner."
Cheering against Jordan from France? No, the Bulls' new center is not exactly your typical Chicagoan. Joakim Noah is not your typical anything, which may go a long way in explaining why he has ignited so many strong and contradictory passions from fans before even playing a minute in the NBA.
On the day after the 22-year-old Joakim Noah was drafted, the headline on a column in the Chicago Tribune read: "You must be Joakim." Others in the city applauded the pick. Joakim Noah has been alternately embraced or derided for his fashion sense, the way he pounds his chest during games, his outspoken political views - he almost declined an invitation to the White House because he did not agree with President George Bush's policies in Iraq - and his general unrestrained joie de vivre.
OK, for a lot of people, what it comes down to is that orchestrated-looking chicken dance: The way he celebrated like a madman during a postgame interview after Florida won its second straight NCAA title this spring. The Internet is filled with YouTube links to the interview, along with comments that run the gamut from silly to outright cruel.
"That was just Jo enjoying the moment of what was going on," Florida coach Billy Donovan said. "Maybe a lot of people would do that behind closed doors and in the locker room. He's not worried about that, he's not worried about what people think.
"What people who pass judgment on him don't understand is how Jo plays is what he's like. He has great energy and passion for life. He's genuine and he's a very unique kid."
If there is one place where Joakim Noah is not all that unique, it is New York. Manhattan is an island filled with kids of the famous and wealthy, a place where it is not so unusual to have lived on three continents. Or to have a mother who is a model-turned-artist or a father who is an athlete-turned-musician. OK, so it's a little unusual for one person to have all of that. But those who met Joakim Noah when he was first honing his basketball skills had no idea that his father was the one-time French-Cameroonian tennis star Yannick Noah or that his mother, Cecelia Rodhe, was a former Miss Sweden.
"I was with him for two months before I realized who his father was," youth basketball coach and mentor Tyrone Green said. "He was never a material person. He would always say that's my father's money, not my money."
Yannick was indirectly responsible for introducing his son to the game as he owned a restaurant in New York that was frequented by Knicks players. When Joakim was still an infant, Ewing gave him his first basketball.
Soon after, Joakim Noah's family moved from SoHo to Paris, where he began playing the game. When he was 12, with his parents now divorced, he returned to New York with his mother and younger sister, moving into a Manhattan neighborhood that residents called Hell's Kitchen when they were trying to sound tough and Clinton when they were trying to sell real estate.
For the most part, Joakim Noah's life was decidedly Clintonian as he attended a series of private schools, including the United Nations International School, Poly Prep in Brooklyn and Lawrenceville Prep outside of Princeton, N.J. Yet, in the summer, when his mother and sister went back to Europe, Joakim Noah discovered what it was like to be a middle-class New Yorker. Joakim Noah spent his teenage summers with Green's family in Flushing, working on his game and expanding his sense of perspective.
"When he first lived with us, he would drop his clothes all over the floor," Green said. "I had to say, 'Hey, we don't have no maid in the Green house.' I showed him how to wash his clothes."
Joakim Noah went to work with Green at an after-school program run by Goodwill Industries in Flushing. He played basketball with the kids and helped them with their homework. Three times a week, he went with Green to visit his elderly mother in a home. And they played basketball all over the area.
He attended the prestigious ABCD camp in Teaneck, N.J., with Green, but did not participate in it until the year before his final year of high school. Instead, he worked at the camp, sleeping on a cot in Green's hotel room. Finally, in 2003, the year before his final year in high school, Green got him an invitation to play.
"We walked in there with three scholarship offers," said Green, who has coached a number of big-name players, including Ron Artest and Chamique Holdsclaw. "We had over 400 offers when we walked out. He was the best player there."
Joakim Noah said he picked Florida because he liked Donovan, a transplanted New Yorker. After barely playing his freshman year, Joakim Noah's game exploded as a sophomore and he may well have been the draft's No. 1 pick if he had not decided to stay in Florida and play for another title.
Though his critics like to deride Joakim Noah's lack of certain offensive skills, Donovan said he brings something that may be even just as important to the NBA: a tireless work ethic and intense desire to compete.
"I think what he learned from his dad, from his winning the French Open, is that it's your heart and your passion that will separate you from the next person," Donovan said. "His dad wasn't more gifted than John McEnroe ... Sometimes it comes down to your spirit."
And there's little doubt that Joakim Noah will be wearing his own unique spirit on his sleeve of his Bulls warm-up jacket this season.
Said Donovan: "People in Chicago are going to love him."
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