Chicago Bulls center Joakim Noah responded Thursday to the middle finger gesture he received from a fan after being ejected in the Bulls' Game 2 road loss to the Miami Heat. In a photo that went viral shows Noah walking off the American Airlines court in Miami with a female fan thrusting the lone digit into his face.
Noah was reluctant to get too in depth about the incident after the Bulls' practice Thursday, but shot upright when asked if he typically has fun with fan interaction. "Do you have fun when somebody sticks their middle finger in your face?" Noah said to ESPNChicago.com.
Noah admitted that unruly fans, especially during road games, are part of the job and concurred that hostile treatment goes back as far as high school as it has for most players who have reached the professional level. "It's all good," he said. "It's all part of the process. It's all part of the process."
Noah showed composure after not having much of it when calls started going against him and his teammates early in Wednesday's game. Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau is making on-court composure a priority for the team moving forward in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinal series.
"Not only Joakim, but our entire team," Thibodeau said. "We've got to do better, do a better job with that. You can't get sidetracked. We know how it's going to be called. We're not going to get calls. We just got to be tough mentally, physically, emotionally. We've got to be a lot stronger."
Thibodeau did address noah's ability to ignore the middle finger in his face. "You can't get wrapped up in stuff that's not important," Thibodeau said. "The important stuff is to concentrate on doing your job and to have the toughness, the physical and mental and emotional toughness, to get through all the things that you have to go through on the road."
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel identified the fan who gave Noah the middle finger as Filomena Tobias, the widow of former CNBC commentator and hedge fun manager Seth Tobias.
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