Daily Zoot - 4/21/09 - Zoot Shuttlesworth

The Daily Zoot is all the news you needed to know yesterday, soon

-You can always tell when a good play is going when Kevin Garnett's mouth looks like its escaping from the rest of his face. The good on this particular day was that the Celtics won game 2 against the Bulls, and Ray Allen knocked down the game winning shot. Ray Ray built that drama like he was still in Hollywood; He went 1-12 in Saturday's game one, and scored only four more points than me and everyone reading this sentence combined. In the first half he was equally unremarkable - so much so in fact that I refuse to even remark on it.........then he came out in the second half like the resurrection (Let me know if I'm going to far with this whole Jesus thing, I'm still anticipating the day when I find that line and am never heard from again). He scored 28 points in the second half, including the game winning 3 pointer you can watch below (Woody!). Allen's 30 overshadowed Ben Gordon's 42 (It was UConn night at the Garden). Somehow getting lost in all the hoopla of the end of the game was the play of Rajon Rondo. The smallest man on the court Monday played inarguably the biggest game. It was like Joe Pesci's performance in My Cousin Vinny (Glen Davis' 26 points and 8 boards, much like Marisa Tomei's Oscar, is more exception than rule). Rondo controlled the early part of the game, sprained his ankle in the first half, returned, and still limped to a 15pt./16ast./12reb./5stl. Triple Double (Usually you add insult to injury, in this case the injury just found this insulting). Ray won the game in the end, but he wouldn't have been in that position had Rondo not played the game he did. The series moves to Chi-Town tied at 1-1. 

-Shifting attention to the Bulls, I want to help F Joakim Noah with something it appears he has been struggling with since College. At The University of Florida, he was a two time national champion, and the face of one of College Basketball's rare dynasties. He played hard every game; and played well enough to be the ninth overall pick in the 2007. Yet, every time Noah steps on the floor, he is usually the object of the opposition's fans (and even his own fan's) scorn. He is at constant war with the crowd's public opinion, and he doesn't understand why. Let me clear it up for him. I'm not even going to talk about his hair; he has a mirror, I'm sure he can see what he's doing to himself (I will say however that when you're ugly, appropriate hair composition is even more crucial. A painting of a stick figure in a solid gold frame is still a stick figure, but hey look at that shine!). Unfortunately for him what people hate about him is something he'll have the most trouble changing, his personality. He plays hard, we get it. But when his intensity becomes emotion, Noah starts to have a problem. When things don't go his way, and even when they do, we get the face you see above. That picture is the reason people don't like Joakim Noah, and why it is unlikely they ever will. Thats the face we get for everything; you can't have bitter beer face be our default. Also, don't talk to the crowd. When you picked up two fouls in about 18 seconds last night, the crowd started chanting "Noah Sucks" (and who can blame them?) You scored a basket on the next possession and retreated back across mid-court shhshhhing (could someone toss me a vowel?) the crowd. What good could come of that? How many fans saw that and thought to themselves, "Well, that was two points in a game that will ultimately see 233 scored, let me just zip this mouth right up." Joke-im (Get it?), the faster you can get out of your own way, the faster you can get people to start liking you. Stop acting like a child and remember that you are a PROFESSIONAL basketball player (key word - Professional). And, unfortunately you do have to change your hair. if you don't have a mirror; get one, get to know it, and learn its relationship with a comb and scissors.