On Tuesday night the Chicago Bulls will kick off the NBA's regular season with a highly anticipated tilt against the defending champion Miami Heat. The game will mark the return of Derrick Rose, the 2011 MVP who missed all of last season healing a torn ACL.
An almost equally important player to the Bulls nursed an injury of his own this preseason, though. Joakim Noah, the Bulls MVP last year in Rose's absence has battled a strained groin throughout camp and was in danger of missing regular season time.
Noah is a fighter, though, and says he will be fully operational for the opener. "I feel pretty good," Noah said. "[Practice is] different than a game but I feel good and I'm really excited about Tuesday."
Noah said that if the injury was really severe, he would have sat the game out.
"I think if my groin was still bothering me we'd have to talk about it because I didn't want it to linger on all season," he said. "It would have been really tough to sit out a game that I've been waiting for all summer. I've been training for this game all summer. So it would have been tough but we got to think big picture."
Last year Noah averaged 11.9 points per game and 11.1 rebounds, to go with 2.1 blocks in the middle of Chicago's vaunted defense. He also admitted this game carries more weight since it is against the defending champs, and Bulls' top rival.
"Of course," he said. "Duh. Every time you play against Miami it's a statement [game]. It's the beginning of our season, we're a hungry group. We've been waiting for this game for a long time. It's one of 82 but we know every time we play against Miami it's important."
Last season the Bulls made a statement by snapping Miami's 27-game winning streak, the second longest run in league history.
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