Danny Granger Calls Joakim Noah's Behavior "Cowardly"
By Tim Ryan
"“He pulled a cowardly move,” Granger said. “He cheap-shotted a couple of my teammates, and one gets thrown out (McRoberts) … The refs never catch what he did … it’s cowardly. And I’m going to say something about it. I wanted to say something about it all the way to the game was over. I just don’t think the game should be played that way. You can play hard and fight and battle, but when you start cheap-shotting people it gets out of hand.”"
Love or hate him, Noah is a brilliant agitator who has already mastered the art of luring opposing players into technical fouls. Any time an incident begins to brew, he’ll pull away in a hilariously innocent manner once he realizes refereeing eyeballs are about to pick up on the heat. It’s the same act as Dennis Rodman. And it works.
Noah was made aware of Granger’s comments, but didn’t deliver anything too juicy. Kyle Korver though summed it up best.
"“Come on now. All this stuff we’ve talked about with the Pacers the last few days and how they’re [giving] hard fouls. Come on. It’s the playoffs, right? It’s the playoffs. That’s what it is. There’s going to be hard fouls.”"
It’s evident that Mr. Korver has taken in his share of playoff games from the memorable and often violent, Thump & Bump era of NBA playoff basketball.
Danny Granger rips Joakim Noah [ESPN; photo via Getty]