Andy Katz may want to have his home and/or his office at the Worldwide Leader checked for a radon leak.
My problems with Katz’s article on Joakim Noah started at the top and by the end had me worked into an absolute frenzy.
The first graph of Katz’s story:
“Joakim Noah has been the face of college basketball the past two seasons.”
I couldn’t disagree more, especially given that the two most notable players in all of college basketball last season were two freshmen who are locks to be the number 1 and number 2 picks in the NBA draft later this month, one of which was the National Player of the Year.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there was no more overrated player in all of college basketball than Joakim Noah. Katz astutely points out that Noah has two things that Oden and Durant don’t: two national championship rings but come on, Andy. If you put Durant or Oden on those Florida teams with Corey Brewer, Al Horford, Lee Humphries and Taurean Green they beat every team they play by 65 points.
Noah’s constant “look at me” show isn’t going to fly on a team full of seasoned veterans. In “The League” he can’t be getting into scuffles with opposing coaches like he did this year with Vandy’s Kevin Stallings or swatting the pom-poms of cheerleaders out of his face. What Katz confuses with passion and fire is really arrogance and bravado. More talk and less walk.
I think what bothered me most about Noah as a college player was the fact that he got as much attention as he did, much of which he called to himself by doing completely stupid, almost spastic dances at half court and pounding his chest like a dope any time he did pretty much anything he did but for all that attention, his game didn’t back it up. In his three years in Gainesville, Noah averaged 12 and 6. In an embarrassing moment for Billy Donovan, Dick Vitale accidentally told two Tennessee radio hosts that the coach was adamant that Al Horford would be a much better NBA player than Noah. Though the coach attempted to perform some damage control, Donovan never took back what he said or denied having the conversation with Vitale. Pretty telling, don’t you think?
Noah will be a marginal player in the NBA, at best. Can you picture Noah trying to post up Amare Stoudemire or Dwight Howard? And I doubt that Ben Wallace or Al Jefferson is going to let Noah hang around the basket to get those garbage buckets that accounted for most of his production at Florida. To his credit, Noah is a scrappy player that isn’t afraid to mix it up but the same can be said for Jeff Foster or Anderson Varejeo. Lacking size and speed, Noah is not a threat to penetrate like Andrei Kirilenko and has a terrible outside shot so there will be no Nowitzki comparisons here.
Whoever takes Noah on June 28 should think long and hard about what they’re drafting. Are they drafting Noah’s game or his mouth?
