Recently Joakim Noah was big news. He'd been arrested for possessing a small amount of marijuana and we all got to point at him and laugh and wonder what he'd been smoking last year on draft day when he wore that clownish white suit and big bow tie. Ha Ha Ha. And isn't it sad that these NBA youngsters lead such reckless and irresponsible lives? Let us cluck our disapproval. Cluck cluck cluck.

A few days have passed and Mr. Noah has now resolved his case with the People of the State of Florida. It turns out the People have decided to drop all charges if Mr. Noah agrees to a period of probation for 6 months and pays a $200 fine. But how many of you have heard about it? Run a search on Google with the terms "Joakim" "Noah" "arrest" "Florida" and you'll get a bunch of stuff on the arrest itself and the corresponding finger pointing from the citizenry. But only two short reports on the resolution of the matter, neither of which have spurred any commentary.

So I'll provide the commentary and speculation. Why would Florida agree to dismiss a case such as this? Two reasons, two reasons which a prosecutor will apply in any criminal matter when deciding what sort of plea bargain to offer, namely the character of the defendant and strength of the case. Here we have an exemplary defendant - a man never before arrested with a good job and history of charity work and community service. And we have a case that may suffer from illegal police conduct, a case perhaps where the marijuana charge may not withstand defense motions and litigation. Therefore, the prosecutor offers this deferred prosecution deal, this outright dismissal.

And yet Mr. Noah decides to accept the offer and pay his fine and participate in his period of probation. He was not required to accept this offer; he could have challenged the police conduct and prevailed and won a dismissal without the burden of probation. Still, Mr. Noah agreed. He accepted responsibility, he admitted fault and he agreed to make amends. He even agreed not to challenge what might have been illegal police behavior.

But for some reason we don't hear about it because for some reason it is only the arrest we care about. By the time a case is resolved we've lost interest. We've moved on the to arrest of the next high-profile athlete.