Ongoing maturation helping Noah to elevate game

Noah will shake his head and wince over the memory now. But the fact is, he and Rose -- at center and point guard -- remain the two positions where Chicago has a decided personnel advantage over Miami. And if their stocky Bulls head coach could inhabit any one of his players in a game -- in the style of that John Malkovich movie a few years back -- it would be the wild-haired, 6-foot-11 Noah. High energy, defensive minded, a player who burns so hot that his teammates warm themselves off him in the huddles.

"That's what's made the whole year, is his engine," Bulls forward Carlos Boozer said recently. "A 7-foot guy with an engine like that? You don't get 7-foot guys like that with his engine. It makes our team special."

At times, he even sounds like his coach, not so much brainwashed as self-editing what used to be one of the league's freest spirits and loosest tongues.

"These are moments that will dictate what our careers are and what people remember us as," Noah said after Chicago's practice Friday. "These are the biggest games of our lives. Everybody is playing like it."

Noah absolutely played like it in the series opener, his 14 rebounds and eight offensive boards driving Chicago's greatest advantage that night over the Heat (19 offensive rebounds, 31 second-chance points). "[His] effort exceeded ours," Miami coach Erik Spoelstra said that night. "And that's what this series is about: endurance, mental and physical endurance. Who can sustain their game more consistently?"

If ever there was a time for Noah and mental toughness to show up in the same sentence, this is it.

"I think one of our strengths is, we've dealt with a lot of adversity this year," Noah told me in a hallway at the Berto Center, away from the cameras and lights. "When you're a group that goes through a lot of things, it makes you mentally tough.

"It's easy when things are going well. That's not going through the fire. We've gone through a lot of things already. That's exciting."