I was pissed as hell at Tyrus's minutes... but Vinny had him in the game with 5 fouls for all of overtime. If Vinny had handled it differently chances are he would have fouled out... gotta hand it to him.

It was a foul on Noah. He argued it a little, but I think just about everyone had already convicted him. Despite his NCAA championships, his hustle and his great play all night in Boston, he's still the guy who got busted by the cops, essentially for partying. He's the guy who recently said on the record that his friends could make their own version of Entourage with their antics. He's the guy with the crazy hair, the crazy screaming, and the crazy dance moves.

And what's he doing? He's fouling the jump shooter, as in, he's breaking one of basketball's oldest axioms. With the game on the line. Potentially negating the high point of post-Jordan Bulls history.

I don't know what Noah's teammate Kirk Hinrich was feeling at the moment of that play -- was he exasperated at Noah, or the referee? -- but he was surely disgusted. Watch his body language. Just fed up. Announcers, fans, media ... everyone seemed to agree this was a disastrously good example of what's wrong with Joakim Noah.

Noah didn't help matters by standing there holding his head in disbelief at the call. He didn't look like a guy who knew what he was doing.

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."

it may be a little early, but after their first playoffgame with any significant minutes. Tyrus showed he's been getting transfusions ice into his veins... and Lamarcus aldridged completely choked away any chance the Blazers had of winning a home playoff game.

Maybe there was a reason why Skiles refused to talk to him at lunch. He recognized that he is player that wilts in the big moments (see game against LSU).

Tyrus for all his much discussed faults has a sack and wants the ball in the big games.


I was pissed as hell at Tyrus's minutes... but Vinny had him in the game with 5 fouls for all of overtime. If Vinny had handled it differently chances are he would have fouled out... gotta hand it to him.

LOL, whatever. Tyrus was a complete non-factor for the bulk of the game, suddenly he hits a few jumpers and he's a big-game player. I'm glad he hit them, but let's not go crazy here...

Come on. You're honestly telling me that when some other than Ben wants the ball and actually does something with it during a big moment at the end of game that it isn't time to celebrate?

And a non-factor offensively and on the glass? Yes. Defensively, he was significantly better than miller and TiT.