Joakim Noah's Making His Biggest Sacrifice Yet for the Chicago Bulls

When Fred Hoiberg took the Chicago Bulls’ head coaching job in June, he was inheriting a roster that had championship expectations. That presents its own set of challenges for a first-time NBA coach.

But with a roster as deep as this one comes another challenge, and how he manages it will go a long way toward determining the Bulls’ fortunes this season.

The Bulls have a lot of frontcourt players who need—and deserve—heavy minutes. A few of them are highly decorated veterans who aren’t used to making sacrifices, and their livelihoods depend on how the minutes and rotations shake out.

Joakim Noah is in an unenviable position with the Bulls. He’s just one year removed from being named Defensive Player of the Year, but he's also coming off a 2014-15 campaign hampered by a knee requiring offseason surgery. He’s in a contract year, and his new coach’s philosophy is centered around tempo and spacing, which heavily favors Pau Gasol and Nikola Mirotic.

So that’s the starting frontcourt combination Hoiberg has gone with in the Bulls’ first two games of the season, and it results in Noah—with all he has on the line and all he’s done for this organization—being asked to accept a bench role and be happy about it.

He insists that it wasn’t a tough sell for Hoiberg.

“He didn’t have to sell me anything,” Noah said at shootaround Tuesday morning before the Bulls’ season-opening win over the Cleveland Cavaliers. “I want to win, and I think this makes our team better. We have a lot of talent in the front, and sacrifices must be made sometimes. I think this gives us the best chance for our team.”

In a Q&A with Grantland’s Zach Lowe this week, Hoiberg implied that coming off the bench was actually Noah’s idea. Noah disputed this version of events, reiterating that he simply wanted to do what was best for the team.

“The truth is I think I’m more effective playing the 5,” Noah said in Detroit on Friday, per the Chicago Tribune’s K.C. Johnson. “And Pau is the same. And we have two very good 4s. So this makes sense.”

Alex Brandon/Associated Press

Gasol and Noah were always an awkward fit with each other last season, something Hoiberg has all but admitted through the rotations he’s been playing. They were on the floor together for four minutes in the opener against the Cavs and not at all in Wednesday’s win over the Brooklyn Nets.

Both are starting-caliber players—as are Mirotic and Taj Gibson—and Hoiberg still hasn't found minutes for rookie and preseason standout Bobby Portis.

Only two can start and only two can close games. Keeping everybody happy is going to be a challenge.

Under Tom Thibodeau, everyone’s roles were well-defined. For the first four years, Carlos Boozer would start alongside Noah and then sit the entire fourth quarter in favor of Gibson for defensive purposes. Last season, with Boozer gone and Gasol having a much stronger case to play at the end of games, the job of juggling these roles was still made easier by Noah’s training-staff-imposed minutes restrictions. 

Now, with everybody fully healthy, things get a little murkier. Noah will be a free agent this summer, and given his health history, he could lose some money on the open market if he comes off the bench all year.

If he’s not thrilled about this, it’s more than understandable.

Under Hoiberg, everybody is still figuring out their roles. After sticking mostly to the Gasol-Mirotic and Gibson-Noah pairings in preseason, he has thrown out big-man combinations seemingly at random over the first two games of the season. Everything is going to be trial-and-error in the short term. 

If Noah wants a model for how to handle this new role, he has one in his own locker room.

Gibson, a talented and versatile two-way power forward who doesn’t shy away from thankless dirty work, is good enough to start on many teams around the league. But he’s accepted his bench role willingly and without a complaint for as long as he’s been in Chicago.

Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press

“He’s definitely sacrificed a lot for this organization,” Noah said of Gibson. “There’s no question about that. He’s a helluva talent, but for us to get to where we want to get to, everybody is going to have to play well and we’re going to have to jell fast, so I’m excited for the opportunity.”

Having too much depth is a good problem, especially with the injury histories of these Bulls. Health and rest will inevitably make some decisions for Hoiberg. It’s a long season, and everyone will get their chance.

For now, though, this is a time of transition and feeling out new roles. It won’t always be comfortable or ideal, but in the process of the Hoiberg Bulls discovering who they are and how they can succeed, everybody is going to have to make sacrifices.

Sean Highkin covers the Chicago Bulls for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.