Some Ideas For Joakim Noah's Second Tweet

Joakim Noah joined Twitter last week very unceremoniously. Word slowly trickled out and at the time of me writing this, Noah had amassed just over 18 thousand followers. His profile reads "Stick stickity" and he has composed a single tweet, simply reading: "General Tso." This is the out-of-context babble that has fueled so many funny Twitter accounts over the years. What is General Tso? The chicken, one assumes, or could Joakim be a Chinese military history buff? We'll never know because athletes do not have to explain tweets unless they are offensive. It's better that way to leave some things up to the imagination.

Noah has been one of the few players the basketball fans on Twitter have been clamoring for. He's a weird guy, weird enough that he'd probably have something interesting to say. And unpredictable, as in inventing a new and elaborate form of celebration midway through the season for no reason whatsoever. His Twitter ceiling is somewhere between Gilbert Arenas-like tangents and accidentally tweeting a picture of his weed a la Micheal Beasley. 

"General Tso." has stood alone since February 22, making it a full week since Joakim last tweeted. At this point, his account seems like a cruel trick meant to squash every last bit of anticipation we had for this day. Noah may never decide to tweet again, in which case, his experiment would still be a strange success, but if he does, here are some possible ideas for his second tweet.

Looking like une petite fete. How u

Breakfast Burrito. 

Just complimented Thibs on his polo shirt. He made me run suicides.

Gator Boyz!!! Go see Ahmad at 7th and 112

@KingJames Nice All star game bro lol

@KingJames @DwyaneWade @chrisbosh Ya'll looking real Hollywood from where i'm tweeting

The vengeance was mine. the pleasure was all mine.

Subway Fresh Fit Meal.

If i'm stopped at a Traffic light, can I be a traffic cone?

Six steps. One step. red step blue step

We caught John Lucas napping. twitpic.com/1o8y9

Hey, I just added you to my Mafia family. You should accept my invitation! :) Click here: http://pmw.es/1se87 

SOAKING WET. RT @swirsk054: Noah bringing out the guns and they are WET

Pop pop pop booyakasha

Stop. Just Stop. Like They'd Trade Me.

Fine thanks for asking. RT @JimmyRunsTrains: How's your sister doing?

You're spiritual plain. Get on my spiritual plane.

the real poet remains calm and lies within us.

Haha i just autographed me third pair of tits. TODAY

Only u can hold u back. It broke the camel's straw after all.

Malted Milk.

Ima keep shooting.

John lucas throws up some funny looking shots. RT @ChiBullsRox23: Who's the funniest guy on the team?

These were awful. RT @RenaissanceFan: Some Ideas For @JoakimNoah Second Tweet therenaissanefan.blogspot.com/...

T'Wolves Provide A New Rebuilding Blueprint

While I watched Kevin Love grab rebound, after rebound, after rebound Saturday night, something dawned on me. Not that Kevin Love is really good, I already knew that. But I began to look around at the Timberwolves team on the floor. Love - Wesley Johnson - Super Cool Beas' lazy eyes - the ever more productive Darko Milicic, and none other than the 16 million dollar man, Luke Ridnour.
And that's when it hit me.
With the exception of Ridnour, Minnesota's four other starters were top five draft picks. (Side Note: While attending college at UW-Madison, I can't even count how many times, while discussing the Bucks with my roommates, one of us prefaced a point by uttering, "With the exception of Luke Ridnour." That man defies convention).
Should Ricky Rubio find is way to America, not only would he instantly become my second favorite NBA point guard/player, but also complete a Minnesota starting lineup composed entirely of top five picks in their respective drafts. I don't know of an economic way of finding out if this has happened before, but I would guess no. At least not in the era of 28 or more teams in the league.
Below are the teams broken down into how many top five picks they have in their starting lineup.

Four
Minnesota

Three
Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Miami, Oklahoma City

Two
Dallas, LA Clippers, LA Lakers, New Orleans, Orlando, Phoenix, Portland, Sacramento

One
Chicago, Cleveland, Memphis, Milwaukee, New Jersey, New York, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Toronto, Utah, Washington

Zero
Charlotte, Detroit, Golden State, Houston, Indiana

What conclusions can be drawn from looking at this list? I feel comfortable making one assumption, and that is: If an NBA team doesn't have a top five pick in their starting lineup, they aren't contending for a Championship. Seemingly obvious stuff.
What about the teams that are contenders? Where do they turn up in this list? Everywhere -- and that's what is so interesting. Boston, Miami, and Oklahoma City in the 'Three' category. Dallas, the Lakers, and Orlando in the 'Two' category. And Chicago, San Antonio, and Utah in the 'One' category. There's no rhyme or reason to that.
Conventional thinking would say, "If you have so many high draft picks in your everyday lineup, then A) You're not very good because you've had so many top selections, or B) You're really good because those top selections are most likely very talented.
Then there's the Timberwolves, who have acquired their four starters in every way imaginable. They signed Milicic as a free agent, traded for Beasley, and drafted Love and Johnson (and Rubio). They're also not very good, which leads me to the point I'm trying to make:
Minnesota, whether intentionally or not, is creating a new blueprint for how to build a team. We just don't know if this will be a successful blueprint, or total bust (Insert Darko joke here).
Of course, there's plenty of flaws in targeting players based on their draft position. An especially loaded or slim draft will skew the results of where a particular player should be drafted. In an attempt to correlate draft position and talent, one must trust the management who made the pick in the first place, which probably isn't the best idea. Then there's also the problem of players whose draft position doesn't at all represent their level of play. Kobe Bryant, Rajon Rondo, and Steve Nash come to mind, none of which were drafted in the top ten.
If building a team around top five draft picks sounds like a somewhat chaotic idea, it's because it is. Watch the Wolves play. They look like a group of talented players thrown together with the hopes that something good will happen out there. Each player's role needs to be clearly defined, and to Coach Kurt Rambis' credit, maybe they have been. It just doesn't look like it. Or maybe all of these talented players, not used to accepting a scaled back role, have been non-responsive to compromising parts of their game.
I think Rubio can control the chaos. A great point guard, and Rubio is that, can make an average team competitive. The thought of him running the break with Johnson and Beasley on each side is thrilling. Speaking of Johnson and Beasley, can't they just switch positions? All I've been hearing is how Johnson isn't a good fit at the two, which I agree with. Why can't Beasley play as the off guard? He'd be a match up nightmare. Don't tell me it's because he can't play defense, because he hurts them just as much in that respect playing small forward. And Darko just needs to be Darko (Insert another Darko joke here). He'll never be good enough because he's constantly compared to LeBron and Melo, two of the best scorers and players of this generation. For this team Darko just needs to score about ten points a game (he's averaging 9.1) and grab five or six boards (Love will get the majority of them anyway). His biggest contribution will be on the defensive end, particularly blocking shots. Milicic is the most underrated shot blocker in the league right now. He's been playing well for the T'Wolves this year, he's just not LeBron or Melo, which will unfairly be the biggest flaw of his career.
This T'Wolves team is young, immensely talented, and still learning how to play together, not to mention how to win in the NBA. Collectively, they're not very good, and may never be. But in a strange way, they're making history.

Gerald Green - The NBA's Forgotten Top Prospect

Last night I watched the excellent ESPN 30 For 30 entitled Marcus Dupree: The Best That Never Was. I'm admittedly a sucker for the "What might have been" documentaries. Dupree was possibly the greatest high school running back ever. A mixture of immaturity, injuries, and bad advice, kept him from becoming the NFL star he was supposed to be.
In the middle of pondering my own failed athletic exploits and trying not to cry over Dupree's return to his old high school stomping grounds, I thought about a modern day NBA equivalent. The only real comparison would be LeBron James, had James flamed out and been out of the league a few years ago.
For the fun of it, I decided to look back at Rivals.com's top prospects between the years of 2002-07 and see how they panned out. Rivals was established in 2001, but didn't start ranking high school basketball recruits across positions until 2003.
Here's the list of the top high school basketball recruit according to Rivals.com:
2007 - Michael Beasley
2006 - Greg Oden
2005 - Gerald Green
2004 - Dwight Howard
2003 - LeBron James
This list produces a strange symmetrical effect. The first two players - James and Howard - have blossomed into stars and are well on their way to becoming Hall of Famers. The last two players - Beasley and Oden - have yet to take off. Oden has battled injuries during every year of his short career. Beasley finally has the opportunity to play more consistent minutes in Minnesota.
Sandwiched in the middle is Gerald Green. You may ask, who is Gerald Green? If you're not an avid follower of the NBA Slam Dunk Competition, you've probably never heard of him.

Green Winning the 2007 Dunk Contest



Green's Memorable "Birthday Cake" Dunk in the 2008 Contest




Green was the top high school prospect in the 2005 class and originally committed to Oklahoma State. He later decommited and decided to enter the NBA Draft. 2005 would mark the last year players were allowed to enter the draft straight out of high school. While Kwame Brown remains the poster child for players that should have honed their game in college, Green isn't far behind.
Fully expecting to be one of the top players taken in the 2005 Draft, Green fell all the way to the Boston Celtics' 18th overall pick. An incredibly raw talent, Green struggled to find playing time with the Celtics. While his 48 inch vertical leap left many in awe, it was his shoddy ball handling, broken jumper, and questionable practice habits that garnered the most attention.
Green's 2007 Dunk Contest victory proved to be both a gift and a curse. While his performance gained him a brief stint in the national spotlight, he became known solely as a high-flyer who couldn't do much else. That summer he was part of the mega deal that brought Kevin Garnett to Boston.
Green went on to play half of the next season with the Timberwolves before he was traded to the Houston Rockets, and then released shortly thereafter. Green played one more year for the Dallas Mavericks in 2008, his last in the NBA.
He played for a total of four NBA teams in his short four year career. Green's career numbers are less than stellar: 7.2 points and 2 rebounds per game on 42 percent shooting.
Green played in Russia in 2009 and has since been trying to find a place on an NBA roster. He was a member of the Lakers' NBA Summer League Roster but did not make the team.
If there's a silver lining in Green's story it's that he's only 24 years old and still healthy. He's at the age when most players are approaching their prime so there's still some hope. For now, we're left to think about the type of player Green could have became had he taken a few years to improve his game in college. He was supposed to be the next Tracy McGrady.