Joakim Noah’s 2016-17 Season in Review

I’m motivated for this one, man.

I just landed in Paris, where I’ll be for a couple months. I figured I’d get some primary source material and ask people here what they thought of one their very own stars (even though he’s from Hell’s Kitchen).

I saw little to no variance in the responses from Parisians; they said he was a Hall-of-Fame quality player as a Bull (easy, there), and that his one season in New York was unacceptably trash. I don’t fuck with the former, but I absolutely fuck with the latter.

Let’s take a closer look at this $72M mess:

Season

It’s fairly simple...I think. His contract is not friendly to the salary cap, and the Knicks could have done plenty more (or nothing at all, and, y’know, save it) with the money they’re paying him. Instead, they signed a past-his-prime free agent who averaged 5 points a game against his career average of 9, 8.7 boards compared to 9.4, and has a player efficiency rating of 15.2 compared to 17.6 for his career.

His defence, much ballyhooed, was not good either. His defensive box plus/minus was 2.8 compared to his career mark of 4. I will point out, however, that he grabbed 21.3% of the available rebounds while on the floor compared to 18.2 in his career which isn’t saying much but it’s gotta be worth something, right?

Noah was also by far the best rebounder on a Knicks team that finished dead last in defensive rebounding percentage. The only other Knick regular to have such a positive effect on New York's rebounding percentage when he was on the court was Mr. Do-It-All himself, Justin Holiday. But let us not delve into another Holiday appreciation post

The big man's season, of course, was cut short by a shoulder injury, amongst several other ailments, and it was then discovered that he was using a substance illegal for use by NBA players as deemed by the NBA. Great! So the Noah experience only existed for 46 games instead of 82, and that was undoubtedly a relief for everyone.

Best Game

His best game was this one.

In his return to Chicago on November 4th, he dropped 16 points, picked up 9 boards and dished 4 assists. He also instilled hope in some Knicks fans (myself absolutely included) that there was some hope for the kid from Hell’s Kitchen.

Noah, as it turns out, was pretty good against his former team this season. On January 12th, he posted a 12 point, 16 rebound game against the Bulls, further proving the theory/guarantee that the Knicks would be in the ECF right now if they played the Bulls every night this season.

Future in New York

Well, we don’t really have a choice, do we? He’s under contract through the 2019-2020 season. He’ll be generously compensated for that, as well. Trades will be very, very difficult to make for the rapidly declining, injury prone and highly imbursed centre.

So what’s going to happen? Will New York make the former DPOY come off the bench? Will they simply cut their losses and release him? If I had to bet, he’s a Knick for the duration of his contract. These are the Knicks, though, so as always, stay tuned.

he was generally really bad at basketball this year