Joakim Noah and His Ark: How He Stayed Afloat and Survived a Flood of Criticism

Joakim Noah looks odd. His crazy mop on the tall, lanky frame is reminiscent of a troll pencil. On draft night he struck a pose that drew to mind images of Krusty the Clown.

His personality is equally odd. Off-court he's nonchalant, flippant and candid. On-court he's a completely different personality. If you look up the word "intensity" in the dictionary, it says, "I want to be like Joakim." The candid things he says off the court and the way he thumps his chest and screams on it make him one of those guys you hate—unless he's on your team.

If you look at his numbers, especially prior to this year, you would think he's nothing special. It certainly had people wondering why the Denver Nuggets were willing to exchange Carmelo Anthony for him this past summer. It had people even more perplexed when Chicago not only turned Denver down, they went ahead and signed Noah to an extension as if to say, "Hands off!" 

If you follow the Chicago Bulls though, you know why. Not everything is measured in stats. Noah is often described as the heart of the Bulls, the soul of the Bulls. Believe it or not, those descriptions don't begin to quantify Noah's value to the team. 

To understand Noah's value, though, you have to understand something about Noah's history.The son of two celebrities, he struggled to find his own identify. His father, Yannick Noah, became the first French-born player to win the French Open in 37 years in 1983. His mother, a former Ms. Sweden, also placed fifth in the Ms. Universe pageant.

Being the son of a tennis star, he was expected to play tennis. The only thing is, he didn't like tennis because he was constantly being compared to his father.

When he discovered basketball, he didn't just discover a sport he loved, he discovered an identity. He wasn't a "tennis player," he was a "basketball player." So he called his dad and told him he was quitting tennis to play basketball.

As a teen growing up, he found a mentor in Tyrone Green. Green helped Noah to get into the Adidas ABCD basketball camp, but not as a player, as a ball boy. When he finally was able to join as a player the summer before his senior season, he went from having one scholarship offer to 300 offers. He chose Florida.

While in college Noah was arguably the most hated man in the history of college basketball (though Christian Laettner and J.J. Redick might argue that). The scorn and vile directed at Noah was almost incomprehensible. Fans would chant "Noah is ugly." At one game they even made chants directed at his girlfriend's promiscuity (think of words that rhyme with hut).

At another game, fans chanted that Tim Hardaway hated him, referring to Hardaway's "I hate gays" comment from a few years back. In one game, the opposing head coach, Kevin Stallings, gabbed the ball and refused to hand it to Noah, slapping at his arm when he tried to take it to pass it in bounds.

There may not have ever been a college athlete who has been the target of so much vitriol. 

It was during this time that he started to develop a rare and unique ability. Perhaps it's because it was in playing basketball he found who he was, but Joakim became something of a DC/AC adapter. You know, those adapters you can buy where you plug them into the cigarette lighter into your car, and it converts the voltage from DC to AC so that you can plug your laptop in?

He's one of those things.

All the negative energy goes into him, and he "converts" it into positive energy which charges his team. I can't think of any better way to explain it,  but if you watch the Chicago Bulls, you know what I mean. He doesn't bring energy into the game, he draws it from the crowd and infuses it into his team. That's what makes him so special, so irreplaceable.  

If you've been watching the Bullls this season, you've seen them again and again come from way down to play themselves back into games. And it's not just that they come back that's impressive, it's that they do it on the road. They came back and won in Dallas, in Houston, in Sacramento and very nearly in Denver. It always seems to start with the "Adapter." 

That's not say he's faultless.

When he was in his rookie season he got into a shouting match with one of his coaches. His team felt that the one-game suspension he received wasn't enough. They voted unanimously to suspend him. Noah took that to heart. He grew from that experience. After that, it took a while to win over the city of Chicago.

That happened in one moment, which you can see if you click on the video.

Other times he's been in the limelight for less than positive reasons don't seem to affect him. Whether it was the "untucked shirt" scandal where he left his shirt untucked as a form of protest to the Iraq war, the LeBron dance scandal, or his recent comments about Garnett being "ugly" (a statement taken out of context by many—he'd been asked what he thought of Garnett's "cancer" remarks), Noah just doesn't let things get to him.

In fact, sometimes it seems that he's trying to manipulate things. When he insulted the very city of Cleveland, it was almost as if he was trying to elicit hate from the audience so he could have more negative energy to feed on. That's what makes him so special. He grows from valid criticism, and he ignores or even feeds off of invalid criticism. He knows who he is and he's content with that.

He doesn't worry about marketing his brand, he just is his brand. 

Because of that, no matter how much criticism comes his way, Noah's ark is going to stay afloat, and everyone on the ark is safely sheltered from the flood. This boat won't sink.