For one night in what has been a long and grueling season devoid of Hollywood flourish, Joakim Noah and the Chicago Bulls produced the kind of happy ending Noah had wanted to see for the superstars in his life, from way back when as well as now.

If ever there was a quintessential player made for the brilliant defensive-minded machinations of his coach, Tom Thibodeau, Noah is it — a nearly 7-foot mass of inelegant appendages. In the arena, around the rim, Noah is many useful things, just never a blur of transcendent creativity like the Bulls’ still-recovering star, Derrick Rose, or the leading man of his New York City adolescence, Lenny Cooke.

Not long ago, Noah attached his name as executive producer to an eponymously titled documentary on Cooke, a former A.A.U. teammate who was profiled last year in The Times under the heading, “Star-to-Be Who Never Was.” The film, which premiered last week at the Tribeca Film Festival, notes that it wasn’t drugs or criminality that nullified Cooke, who once outranked LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony in those arbitrary projections of greatness.

It was, as “Lenny Cooke” makes painfully clear in almost 90 minutes of unvarnished access, a case of attitudinal and cultural perversions, the misunderstanding that talent alone is a winning lottery ticket.