“Shout out to the Dentist” Joakim Noah proclaimed during a July introductory press conference at the New York Knicks practice facility back in July. Noah, along with Courtney Lee and Brandon Jennings, were formally introduced as new members of the New York Knicks and a story was born on that day that confused many people.
Joakim Noah got the most attention on that day. The media wanted to talk to him about returning home to New York. He grew up in New York and went to high schools around the area including United Nations International, Poly Prep in Brooklyn and even Lawrenceville in New Jersey. Yet despite his New York roots, Noah went away from the city for over a decade, playing three seasons of college basketball for Florida University and then playing for the Chicago Bulls for nearly a 10 years before he fell out of favor with the organization. The Bulls moved on and Noah moved home.
But it was when he was talking about his relationship with the Knicks president Phil Jackson that caught the attention of many. The question was posed to him about his first meeting with Phil Jackson and he recalled a story a few years ago when he went to Phil’s Montana property unannounced.
“I took the plane, went to Montana, I knock on his door and we start talking,” Noah said last month. “He goes, ‘Why are you here?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’
“It was a great couple of days. I got an opportunity to meet one of the legends and spend time with him, it was great. Life works in mysterious ways. Now we’re here.”
And to add to it, he had no clue about Phil Jackson wanting him to do pull-ups to test his strength.
adding on to @HerringWSJ, End of Noah talking about being with Phil 4,5 years ago & not knowing about any pull-ups. pic.twitter.com/pmO6DtBKx7
— Rob Lopez (@R0BaTO) July 8, 2016
Joakim Noah told a very vague story without any clear direction but there appears to be an interesting backstory tied in. There’s a dentist out of the Greenwich Village area who was the link between Noah and Jackson, as Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News found out.
Before the spontaneous getaway for Phil Jackson and Joakim Noah in Montana, before the disputed pull-up challenge on the NYC streets and the $72 million deal consummated at a Disney World resort — there was the dentist from Greenwich Village.
Daniel Rudolph, a 71-year-old with a thick New York accent, was the facilitator of the unusual relationship between Noah and Jackson, playing the dual role of teeth cleaner and NBA intermediary.
This started because of a pickup basketball game in 1971, when Jackson was a Knicks forward and sometimes played with Rudolph and his buddies on Monday nights. The game in Greenwich Village, which still tips off weekly and may be the longest running pickup game in the city, attracted NBA players in its earliest days, including Jackson, Eddie Mast and Dick Van Arsdale.
Jackson and Rudolph developed a relationship from these encounters, beyond the patient-dentist dynamic that was also occurring in Rudolph’s office. It has persevered and flourished through the years. The two have sat together at Knicks games, and Rudolph traveled to Montana to attend the wedding of Jackson’s daughter.
“When Phil went to California, he got another dentist there,” Rudolph says. “But when he broke a tooth here, I fixed his tooth here.”
Many years after he first inspected Jackson’s teeth, Rudolph got another NBA client — the New York-bred Noah — who also had two buddies participating in the aforementioned pickup game.
When Noah expressed a desire to meet Jackson out of fascination, the 7-footer sought out the dentist through his agent.
“I made the introduction,” Rudolph says.
The rest of the story gets strange, and perhaps speaks to the compatibility potential between center and team president — “kindred spirits,” as Rudolph calls them. Jackson was between jobs having just been spurned by the Lakers, and apparently knew Noah was going to show up at his home in Montana.
But Jackson didn’t know when.
That’s when the faithful meeting took place. No one knows what exactly went on back then but one can imagine they connected on some interesting levels. It’s something that Rudolph viewed as a good thing for both men.
Rudolph has an idea why Noah, who grew up in a worldly environment as the son of a tennis star and the former Ms. Sweden, traveled to the spiritual and philosophical Jackson.
“You’re exposed to a different type of person in the NBA. Phil is a different type of person. And I think Joakim wanted to expand his universe,” Rudolph says.
Jackson and Noah are now together in New York and they can make new memories in the city that they both grew up in with the team they both have a passion for. The Knicks are where Noah and Jackson will both perform and hope to change recent fortunes for the fan and especially Rudolph in particular.
For Rudolph, who shares season tickets behind the basket at the Garden, there’s another client to root for passionately.
“I think No. 1, it’s great for New York. I think Joakim wants to show off in front of his home crowd. I think he will be a fan favorite, because they’re going to love his hustle,” he says. “And he has the best attributes for a teammate. You want to play with a guy who does all the dirty work and passes the ball. That’s him. You don’t think Melo is going to love that?”
Just goes to show, relationships are everything. Even if it is with a man who drills holes in your teeth.
