Joakim Noah: Bulls Star Will Get Fined For Giving Us Exactly What We Want

The NBA is wrong to fine Joakim Noah, just like they were wrong to fine Kobe Bryant.

Yes, I said it, and it won’t be the popular opinion, but I don’t say that condoning what Joakim Noah said. That word, “f-----,” has no business in our culture.

Players, coaches, people on the street and ourselves shouldn’t utter that word in joking or to hurt someone. So I’m not here telling you the word is acceptable.

I’m telling you, we can’t have it both ways with sports.

We, as fans, ask for incredible access to the game. We listen in to Eric Spoelstra during a time out. We hear Derrick Rose mic’ed up during halftime. We want to be on the field in the NFL and in the dugout for baseball games.

We want to hear players firing each other up. We want to hear trash talk. We want to hear altercations and all the personality that makes professional sports so engaging.

But with that, we must be clear about the social contract we are signing. We must understand that we are asking to see these players at their rawest and most intense, yet we feel it right to fine and condemn them for actions done at their rawest.

I don’t buy it. I don’t think it’s right and I that these players should not be punished for it.

If the world clamored to see me at my rawest, most aggressive and most real moments, they’d get a very ugly version of the person they normally see.

When I’m angry, I’m loud, abrasive, foul and some of the things that come out of my mouth I’m not proud of. But for the world to ask to see that and then be offended when they get it is a bit hypocritical.

Yes, there are two differences when it comes to Noah. There is the involvement of a fan, and there is the word that he said. But let’s remove the fan for a moment. Let’s take this back to Kobe.

Had Kobe, instead of yelling the word “f-----” had yelled something else; some string of four letter words and curse words and called the ref an idiot in the process, would he have been fined? Would that have been okay?

Had Kobe uttered a racial slur to a ref, would we have fined him more? Less? The same? Had Joakim Noah yelled at the fan and told them he wish a loved one would die, would he have been fined? Should he have been fined?

These players play each game like it’s life or death, because that’s what we expect. When we feel they are phoning it in, we rip them to shreds, when they are off, we sully their reputation (just look at LeBron’s label of not being a closer prior to this series).

Yet, when we get the full range of their passion and it boils over into a moment of weakness, they go from our hero to our villain.

We may not like what Joakim Noah said, but he wouldn’t have been in any trouble had the TV cameras not been on him at that moment. If the NBA is serious about promoting a good image for their product, then they’d be more serious about taking the cameras off players in moments of raw emotion.

But the NBA wouldn’t want to do that. That’s not what we want. We want to see it.

Well, we got it. We didn’t like it and that’s fine. But we shouldn’t condemn him for it. We wanted to see the honest side of sports.

We should be careful what we wish for.