ATLANTA -- Joakim Noah is what we want out of the Final Four on the day before the national championship game. A meteor of hate wound in a persecution complex, running on nuclear energy who is politically aware and can ball like a mother.
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| Florida's Joakim Noah is the team's emotional leader. (Getty Images) |
The next time Noah speaks to us publicly, he will be a former college player. That would be Monday night after the national championship game against Ohio State.
Anyone who believes that won't mark the Florida junior's final game as a collegian has been sampling the martini menu at Morton's down the street from the media hotel.
The rest of us teetotalers (wink, wink) have seen the light, or the ponytail or the latest "Hate Noah" blog. The pursuit of happiness isn't always happy.
"If I wasn't the Player of the Year or if we didn't win a national championship, it was like a bad season," Noah said. "I didn't come back to school to make people happy."
By this point, you've either had to suppress a gag reflex or spent the next car payment on an authentic No. 13 journey. Noah makes you pick a side.
There might not have been a more compelling figure in the Final Four since Bill Walton. That's not the martinis talking, that's the 2006 Final Four MVP himself after watching an HBO special on UCLA the other night.
It hit him, this 22-year-old kid -- the impact of John Wooden, the Bruins and Walton. Florida wasn't doing this in a vacuum. There was some significant social and athletic history attached to chasing back-to-back titles.
"He was an unbelievable college player," Noah said of Walton. "But off the court, I share his views ... I'm against the war. I don't understand it. When I hear Bill Walton I think, 'Oh yeah, he was a hippie.' It's so much more than that. He spoke his mind. ... I respect that, players who don't mind speaking their minds."
Sometimes Noah doesn't even have to speak. He had to be talked into the Gators' White House visit last April. His disdain for President Bush was obvious when Noah dressed down for the occasion, shirttail flapping. With a Florida basketball secretary on each arm, he descended the back steps of the White House like, as one writer put it, he had just been out on the town in Las Vegas.
"I don't really agree with his views," Noah said of the President. "I don't really agree with what he stands for."
Stop your e-mails right now. Having a three-dimensional personality is a good thing. It's OK to spout your political views on a podium at the Final Four.
Zinjin 
