Four years ago, Cobe Williams, a Chicago ex-convict who has made it his life's work to stop the violence on the South Side of his hometown, saw Joakim Noah tweet about the documentary The Interrupters. Williams stars in the film, which follows him and a few friends as they routinely go into Chicago's most dangerous neighborhoods and "interrupt" fights before they start.
Soon after that tweet, Williams and Noah connected on Twitter, and ended up meeting at a P.F. Chang's in Deerfield, Illinois to discuss ways Noah could do something to help quell the rising violence in Chicago. At first, Williams was unsure what to expect. But within a couple weeks, he brought 15 gang members from Englewood out to Deerfield to eat dinner with Noah. As Williams describes it, Noah did not touch his meal. Instead, he immersed himself in the stories of 15 forgotten young men. Later, they went to shoot hoops at the Bulls practice facility. No press or Instagrams documented the occasion. This was for the kids.
It's hard sometimes not to be glib about NBA free agency. Take out the breathless, wall-to-wall coverage, the Reddit conspiracy theories, the crazy money, and the flurry of players switching teams, and the NBA is like any other business. The New York Knicks signing or trading for a Chicago Bulls player isn't much different than a company like Uber poaching Facebook's Head of Communications, or Danny Meyer finding a new sous chef from a Brooklyn restaurant.
But what has happened to the Bulls and the city of Chicago this summer is different. Rose's operatic highs and lows and Noah's indomitable on-court spark will be missed by basketball fans. But putting sports aside, the loss of both players in a single swoop is devastating—particularly the people who can't afford $200 tickets to the United Center.
I'd heard about Rose contributing to his community but not so much about Noah. Read the whole article fam, it's not too long and it really captures the character of the players we've brought in. This is gonna be the easiest crew to root for in a long time imho. They're legit dudes with chips on their shoulders, plenty to prove and the talent to surprise nay sayers, but even if they fail, this definitely feels like the "culture" Phil wanted to instill.
