Gator grows into tournament's star
INDIANAPOLIS -- They grow up fast, don't they? It was yesterday, or it seems like yesterday, that Joakim Noah was a boy of 12, a spectator at the Adidas ABCD basketball camp, watching man-sized campers like Donnell Harvey, Marvin Stone and Carlos Boozer.
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| Florida's Joakim Noah is playful, enlightened and rebelliously curious. (Getty Images) |
"It's because of my dad," Noah told me on that 1998 day at the ABCD camp in Teaneck, N.J. "Yannick Noah."
Ah. Yannick Noah. The tennis player. The last Frenchman to win the French Open. Eight years ago, that was Joakim Noah's ticket to fame. His father. His mother, for what it's worth, is a former Miss Sweden. These are his parents. Celebrity was inevitable.
But now look at him. Noah is famous of his own accord. He has become the snarling, screaming face not just of the Florida Gators, but of the entire 2006 NCAA Tournament. Florida will play UCLA on Monday night for the national title, and if the Gators win, Joakim Noah, with his bushy pony tail, awful moustache and Jolt Cola game, will become even more famous than he is right now.
"This is crazy," Noah said Sunday from his individual media room at the RCA Dome.
Each starter for both teams, all 10 players, was given his own breakout room to speak with reporters for 30 minutes. Noah needed a bigger room. Some of the other nine players, and the media interested in them, could have fit into a coat closet. Noah's group could have filled an ark. Reporters filled every chair, leaned against every wall, spilled out into the hallway. More than one reporter came from France.
"He's just becoming a rising son," said Jean-Luc Thomas of the French sports daily L'Equipe. "Joakim is behind Tony Parker and Boris Diaw, but we'll see. Maybe he'll catch up."
Catch up? Don't tell Florida basketball sports information director Fred Demarest. He spent most of Monday and Tuesday of Final Four week dealing with media requests -- for Noah. They came from all over the globe: France, Sweden, Cameroon, Brazil ...
"I've never seen anything like it," said Demarest, who has been at Florida for four years and was at LSU before that. "The international requests that come in, they don't care that we're the University of Florida and we're playing in the Final Four. All they care about is Joakim."
Teammates say Noah doesn't seek the spotlight -- "He'd rather it be all about the team," said sophomore forward Al Horford -- but Noah didn't look uncomfortable Sunday. Tampa Tribune columnist Joey Johnston calls Noah "the most compelling player ever to play in the Final Four," and he might be right. Noah is thoughtful like Shane Battier, enlightened like Lew Alcindor, rebelliously curious like Bill Walton.
While his teammates were fielding questions about their relationship with Florida's football players and their pregame superstitions, Noah was asked about the impact African-American tennis pioneer Arthur Ashe has had on his life.
"If it wasn't for Arthur, my father wouldn't be where he is," Noah said. "I'd be a little kid in Africa."
Like those who came before him -- the presidential Battier, the insightful Alcindor, the eclectic Walton -- Noah can play a little bit, too. He has become the most dominant player in this tournament, filling every box on the stat sheet: 16.2 points, 9.6 rebounds, 4.6 blocks, 3.2 assists, 1.4 steals.
Smart as he is, Noah isn't fooled by the numbers or the attention into thinking he's something he's not. What is he not? Terribly skilled, for one thing. He's monstrously athletic and agile, but with the ball in his hands ... Reggie Miller or Magic Johnson, he ain't.
"I'm not shooting 3s. I'm not doing all this stuff with the ball," Noah said. "It's mostly transition baskets and easy buckets that my teammates are giving me. And I need that."
The dichotomy of Noah's game -- the massive production, the limited skill set -- has NBA scouts at odds. One Eastern Conference scout says Noah is a 2006 NBA lottery pick if he enters the draft, citing his "phenomenal length ... and he runs the floor like a guard. He's got decent hands in transition and good timing with shot-blocking."
Another scout, from the West, says Noah has a bright professional future but wouldn't get off an NBA bench in the 2006-07 season. "His body's not very good -- he's light in the ass and has narrow shoulders -- his release on his shot is low, and his low-post game needs to improve. He doesn't really have a go-to move on the box."
Still, that scout says, Noah would be picked no later than the high teens or early 20s.
Noah is listed at 6-feet-11, 227 pounds, but he's bigger than that. Noah concedes he's at least 7-feet tall, and teammates call him a "footer," as in 7-footer.
"He likes being 6-11," Horford said. "He thinks '7 feet' looks corny."
All around the country, basketball players inflate their listed heights. Not Noah. It's almost like he doesn't want to grow too big.
Too late for that.
