1 » Florida Gators center Mike Pouncey, likely to be a first-round selection in the 2011 NFL Draft Thursday evening, recently took part in a segment for ESPN‘s Sports Science feature. You can view it below:
2 » Indiana Pacers forward Danny Granger accused Chicago Bulls center Joakim Noah of being a dirty player on Tuesday, saying he took cheap shots at some of his teammates during a recent game. “The refs never catch what he did … it’s cowardly,” Granter told ESPNChicago.com. “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.” Asked his thoughts on the subject, Noah dismissed Granger’s claims and said he did nothing of the sort. “I played dirty? OK. I’m just trying to win basketball games, man,” he said. “It’s the name of the game. I’m just out there trying to do what I gotta do. Like I said, I give a lot of credit to their team. They play hard as hell. They were competitive. I don’t have anything bad to say about them. Everybody saw what happened out there. Now you want to call me a dirty player? I don’t think I’ve ever been a dirty player. It is what it is. It’s OK.”
Florida head coach Billy Donovan, who mentored Noah during back-to-back NCAA National Championship runs, said nothing could be further from the truth than Granger’s claims. “I don’t know Danny Granger at all, but I do know Joakim, and I do not agree with that one bit,” Donovan said during an interview with ESPN 1000 “Jo to me is the guy that I’ve got a tremendous amount of love and affection for. He’s one of those guys, that I think if you’re the opposing team, you don’t like him. […] I think the last thing I would say about him is that he is a dirty player, that’s the farthest thing from the truth, but again, I don’t know Danny Granger. I don’t know what the intent was of that, but I’ll tell you this, when you go against Joakim, you better bring it, because he is coming every single possession for every offensive, defensive rebound and run the floor. He’s going to do what he’s gotta do to out there to try and help his team win, and that could be misconstrued by Granger saying he’s dirty, but Joakim Noah is not a guy that I ever felt coaching or being around him that he was a dirty player.”
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