Joakim Noah Expected To Sign With The Knicks

By Stephen Gossett in News on Jun 30, 2016 6:00PM

Longtime Chicago Bulls center Joakim Noah is expected to sign with the New York Knicks, according to ESPN league sources.

The native New Yorker would rejoin another recently departed Bulls fan favorite, Derrick Rose, who was dealt to the Knicks on June 22 in exchange for José Calderón, Jerian Grant and Robin Lopez.

The Knicks will meet with Noah on Friday afternoon, ESPN sources said. Under NBA terms, a deal cannot be finalized until July 7, but teams and free agents can begin hammering out verbal agreements ‎starting Friday at 12:01 a.m.

The news is hardly a shock, considering ongoing reports of Noah's unhappiness with the direction of Bulls management plus Rose's public attempts to recruit the former All-Star. But it definitely feels like further, painful punctuation to the end of an era for Bulls fans—even if it is the salient move.

One of the major reasons Noah became so beloved in Chicago was his off-court activism, which will likely still run deep here despite Noah's professional departure. The basketball star's community-development organization, Noah's Arc Foundation, will likely stay here, according to the Sun-Times. "Jo wants to bring the program with him wherever he goes,’’ a source told the paper, “but [the foundation is] staying in Chicago. Jo feels this community needs it most and it’s in his heart."