Joakim Noah Sprains Shoulder In Bulls Loss

Things in the Windy City appear to be unraveling quickly. The Bulls keep losing to teams they should beat and are only a handful of games over .500. Jimmy Butler openly criticized coach Fred Hoiberg over the weekend. And during a 105-102 loss to the Brooklyn Nets on Monday, forward Joakim Noah left the game with a shoulder injury.

In the third quarter, Noah attempted to steal the ball from Nets forward Andrea Bargnani; as he came down from his jump, Bargnani bend Noah’s arm backwards.

“Something popped out and then went back in,” he said. “It’s pretty painful.” Noah immediately left the court and had his arm in a sling post-game. “The X-ray turned out to be negative, so that was positive,” Noah said. “We’ll see how I feel [on Tuesday, when an MRI is scheduled].” The Bulls are calling his injury a left shoulder sprain. For the struggling Nets, Brook Lopez turned in a strong performance, scoring 21 points and pulling down 12 rebounds. Thaddeus Young added 16 points and 13 boards of his own. “We came in focused, we were energetic and our bench did a great job of coming in keeping the energy high and responding to runs,” Lopez said. “We were all there for each other. We were pulling for each other.”  

Photo: Bulls forward Joakim Noah by Keith Allison via Flickr Commons