A bit late with this one, but a quick and fun one.
Fifteen years ago today, at the post-game press conference after Game 2 of our first round series vs the Cleveland Cavaliers, when we had gone down 0-2, Joakim Noah uttered the sentence that will probably be his epitaph: "I never heard anybody say I'm going to Cleveland on vacation."
It started during a pre-taped interview when this exchange occurred:
Joakim: "I don't know about this place man. I just stayed in my hotel room. Every time I look out my window, it's pretty depressing out here man. It's bad. It's bad."
Interviewer: "So you're not going out?"
Joakim: "No. No going out in Cleveland, man. It's all factories."
The interview probably would've been forgotten if not for the following press conference where this happened:
Reporter: "Do you regret anything that you said about Cleveland?"
Joakim: "Not at all. Do you like it? Do you think Cleveland's cool? I mean I never heard anybody say I'm going to Cleveland on vacation. I mean, what's so good about Cleveland?"
It quickly became a meme and one of the classic NBA quotes, and remains the most iconic thing he ever said.
I do feel like people outside our fanbase forget the context sometimes. It was the eve of 2010 free agency. We were going after LeBron. We were going to be easily defeated in that playoff series - running a skeleton crew six-man rotation(Derrick, Jo, Deng, Taj, Kirk, Brad Miller) with Flip Murray, Hakim Warrick, and Acie Law for depth after having cleared cap space - and nobody here cared. Our minds were in July already.
Jo was losing to LeBron and wanted him to come to Chicago. Those comments were about LeBron, not Cleveland.
As it turns out, the game immediately following this in Chicago was the only game of the series we won, a 15-board, 2 block, 2 steal night for Jo.
Anyway, not much more to say. Just thought it'd be a fun one to do. Here's some videos - the original, Joakim talking about it more recently, and the callback he did when Cleveland hosted the ASG.
