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JOAKIM NOAH Behavioral issues |
Celtics assistant coach Clifford Ray was a big-time glass-eater at the University of Oklahoma and an all-conference performer in the early 1970s. Yet one of his most vivid memories of his days in Norman was the night he and a couple of teammates sat outside the school gymnasium and tried to gauge how the basketball team was doing by the noise of the crowd.
Ray and his teammates had been suspended. What happened?
"Just some growing pains," Ray said. "It's the same thing he's going through right now."
The "he" to whom Ray referred is Bulls rookie forward Joakim Noah, who missed Sunday's game in Atlanta because his teammates voted unanimously that he not dress for the game. Why? Because he verbally abused assistant coach Ron Adams Friday at a morning shootaround and has been a handful for much of the season (wait for the Scott Skiles memoirs).
Noah had missed Friday's game in Philadelphia as discipline from interim head coach Jim Boylan for the behavior. The players then added a game, to which Noah said, "I'm a rookie. I mean, it is what it is. I've just got to move on, and there's nothing I can do about it."
This wasn't the first time Noah has come under the gun. The guy with the apparent pleasing personality and charm has, according to the Chicago media, been fined numerous times for tardiness.
"This has been building during the course of the season because he has had some situations where he's been late or not doing what the Chicago Bulls do," Boylan said. And the players simply got fed up.
It's at least the second time this season that a team has voted to suspend a player for a game. The Knicks voted not to allow Stephon Marbury to play in the Nov. 14 game against the Clippers in Los Angeles. Marbury had had a williwaw on the team plane and skipped a game in Phoenix the night before, flying back to New York. But coach Isiah Thomas overrode his players' wishes and allowed Marbury to play. The Knicks still lost. Boylan acceded to his players' wishes and the Bulls lost by 21.
Washington coach Eddie Jordan said, "I respect the fact that the players said something. That's the way it should be, especially with a rookie. Especially with a rookie."
Celtic Brian Scalabrine recalled a somewhat similar incident when he was at Southern Cal. The team had beaten Arizona State and was preparing for a big game against Arizona, which then boasted a team led by Gilbert Arenas and Richard Jefferson. But the night before the game, several players broke curfew, Scalabrine said, and coach Henry Bibby went to the remaining five players - one of whom was Scalabrine - and asked them to vote on whether the curfew-breakers should play.
"Four of them were starters," Scalabrine said. "Coach Bibby was saying that they let the team down, but I know I was thinking, 'We're playing Arizona. This isn't the time to make a statement. I want to beat them.' So we voted and it was unanimous that the guys who had broken curfew be allowed to play. And we ended up getting blown out by 45.
"In the end, the coach didn't want to be the one who made the decision. And of the five guys who voted, three of them really didn't play that much, so they did what they thought was best for the team."
The Celtics of the Larry Bird era often wore their hearts on their sleeves. You knew, for instance, that Darren Daye wasn't the most popular teammate; almost anyone would offer that one up, albeit in a roundabout manner. Cedric Maxwell recalled an incident in which a brash newcomer by the name of Dennis Johnson got into it a bit with the coach, K.C. Jones. And, Maxwell recalled, the players sided with the first-year head coach.
"Sometimes, you can only make that happen when you have a veteran team, which we had at the time," Maxwell said. "But DJ was saying how he was right and K.C. was wrong and we went up to him and said, 'No, DJ, you're wrong. And you need to go in and apologize to K.C.'
"And you know what? That's what he did. For teams to get better and grow, there has to be some self-governing. Peer pressure can bring about a change just as much as anything a coach says."
Ray can't remember how many games he was suspended at Oklahoma. He didn't want to go into the reasons why, other than to say, "It was during the era of the black player and civil rights, and a group of us boycotted a game. So we were suspended."
But, Ray was asked, had he ever known of an instance when a group of players had voted to make a fellow teammate miss a game for, in essence, being a jerk?
"No," Ray said. "But I do remember one time when a group of players voted a player back on the team. And I know it happened because the player happened to be me."
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
