Noah's Foul Straight Out of Thibodeau's Playbook

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And yet somewhere the smartest basketball guy I know, David Thorpe, cheered. When Noah fell to the Bulls on draft day 2007, Thorpe told me that he thought the Bulls would win a championship with him.

The kinds of things that made him say that, believe it or not, were at the heart of this play.

"Sure," says Thorpe, "I wish he didn't come down quite so aggressively. But you're playing the defending champions on the road. This is a Paul Pierce jumper from the free throw line. You can't play solid. You have to make a play."

The irony, he points out, is that this play is right out of Tom Thibodeau's Boston Celtics' playbook. One thing that Thorpe and his IMG Academies colleague Mike Moreau have been noticing all year about the Celtics is that they do foul jump shooters. Not constantly, but more than most good defensive teams.

And to Moreau and Thorpe, that's OK.

"The reality is that you need to contest shots so aggressively all the time," Thorpe explains. "That's what Joakim does. You ask him to go hard, and he goes hard. The Celtics, too. And you can't go that hard and not cross the line once in a while. Coach Moreau said it's like asking someone to run 28 miles, and then getting mad because they ran 28 miles and one foot."

Thorpe points out that Joakim Noah holds the all-time record for blocks in the Final Four, and in the NCAA tournament -- despite the fact that he's not really known as a shot-blocker. That, Thorpe says, is because Noah contests shots hard. "The fact is, you can't apply standard rules to that guy," says Thorpe. "And Gator fans know what I mean when I say 'thank goodness.' His pushing those limits is a big reason why Florida won two titles, instead of none."

Thorpe points out that the Bulls were making big aggressive contests like that all night, and did that help Ray Allen into a bad night? That's the idea ... "Ray Allen had a good look at the end of overtime," says Thorpe, "and missed badly. One thing he might have been thinking was 'here they come ... I better get rid of it quickly.'"

If you get people thinking like that, that's good defense.

Thorpe contrasts it to how Hedo Turkoglu defended the final possession against Andre Iguodala. Everybody agrees that was great defense by Turkoglu, and he sure didn't foul the jump shooter. But Thorpe posits that by being determined not to foul, Turkoglu's defense lost a little edge.

"To play at the highest level," says Thorpe, "you're going to to over the top sometimes. You'll risk some mistakes. And that's OK. Sometimes, you're not playing percentages ... you just want to go play. To me, Hedo Turkoglu is 6-10, and Andre Iguodala is 6-6 -- just make a play. I don't care what happens. Make that play. That's what Joakim did, and I'll take it."

And in the end of course, the fates smiled on Noah for his aggression, as so often seems to happen. Not only did Paul Pierce miss one of the free throws to ensure overtime, but they also proved Noah somewhat correct -- in overtime Pierce made that exact same shot with ease. We'll never know if his earlier shot would have gone in, thanks to Joakim Noah, and that could be a good thing for Bulls fans.

http://myespn.go.com/blogs/truehoop/0-39-96/David-Thorpe-Loves-Joakim-Noah-s-Foul.html
 

theYoungEsquire

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You want to go hard generally, but you have to put things in context. At that stage of the game, you cannot foul.
 

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