Don't Look Back

Winning a national title was supposed to be the ultimate goal. But for this group of returning Gators, expect this to be the best year of their lives

Forty-eight hours after winning the championship, the 6'11" African Viking went to see his coach. Can't go with you to the White House tomorrow, he told Billy D. Can't stomach 19-yearolds coming home in body bags, he told Billy D. Got to stand my ground, he told Billy D.

Billy Donovan, his BlackBerry down and his antennae up, envisioned the headlines: "Hoops Star Snubs President. This Time, Bush Loses Florida." So the coach of the Gator basketball team spoke to the face of the Gator basketball team for over two hours. They spoke about war and politics and ways to make a difference. The player handed the coach the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 and the coach handed the player sage advice. He warned that a boycott of the president would make "real big news, negative news." And then he said, "What about the guys? They'll get all the questions. What about Taurean and Al and Corey?"

The African Viking went straight home and packed for DC.

This is Florida basketball. A politically aware big man. Four inseparable suitemates. A coach with an open door. An African mask hanging in the locker room. A phantom Cameroon marriage. The NBA on the back burner. Defending a title on the front burner.

When the African Viking visited the White House last April with clenched teeth ("It was intense. I didn't have a great time"), his was just one more unselfish act on a team that knows no other way. This is a team that has to order its shooters to shoot, that has calmed a high-strung coach and that could win a second straight title because its four best players still live on campus and under one roof, with an air against the upperclassmen. Moving the ball unselfishly, they'd periodically thump the first team. Billy D stored it away.

Still, it was a rough first year. Green, the point guard, had such an iffy handle that Donovan nicknamed him Apple Turnover. "As in, 'What kind of turnover we having today? Apple or cherry?' " Billy D says. Noah, who played only 9.4 minutes a game, was flailing too … and missing his hair. On his recruiting trip the year before, he arrived with dreadlocks halfway down his back, and when he asked Donovan, "Is there a dress code for hair?" Billy D said, "No, as long as it's neat." But then he ordered the kid to cut it his first day on campus. "That was just to get you here," he told his freshman, with a wink.

The new guys realized they were dealing with a somewhat manic coach, one who'd practice them 'til 6 p.m, text-message East Coast recruits 'til 9, then text-message West Coast recruits 'til midnight. So the four roommates helped one another through the tough times. One of them was the son of a tennis legend (Yannick Noah), one the son of a former Chicago Bull (Sidney Green), one the son of a former Milwaukee Buck (Tito Horford) and one the son of a tobacco farmer (Ellis Brewer). They sat up into the night and learned one another's histories. Joakim: called himself an African Viking because his father is black and his mom is a Swede; wished he could do something about what was going on in Rwanda and the Sudan. Taurean: father had a certain teammate named Michael Jordan touch his infant son in his crib for good luck; folks wouldn't let him wear earrings.

They laughed at how reckless the 6'9" Corey could be with the ball, and even though Billy D was starting him, his boys called him the Drunken Dribbler. They teased the 6'10" Al for flexing after dunks. And mattress in their living room. In case a teammate needs a place to crash.

Those four returning Gators—the African Viking (Joakim Noah), the Drunken Dribbler (Corey Brewer), the Apple Turnover (Taurean Green) and The Godfather (Al Horford)—are rare, you-first players who have taught Billy D that personality gets you a championship faster than high school All-Americas do. And now they're back to teach the world of college basketball the meaning of "Ndongo."

THEY ANNOUNCED their arrival two years ago—not that anyone wanted to hear it. Every day on his way to class, Noah had a boom box on his shoulder and Brewer, Green and Horford on they jabbed at Jo for always losing his cell phone in airports and his credit card in restaurants.

In the end, a ragged season ended prematurely, with a second-round Tournament loss to Villanova. With Lee graduating and Walsh and Roberson leaving early, Gator basketball figured to go pffft. But Billy D was curiously serene. Maybe it was because being unranked, the pressure was off. But his friends say it was because he remembered the scrimmages of the year before, when four suitemates showed they could each handle the ball, run the floor, respond to instruction and gladly pass to Humphrey. his hip. They were a four-man freshman parade, moving to the beat of Bob Marley, and students glared at the display. "I'd tell him, 'Jo, there's a new thing now—it's called headphones,' " Donovan says.

Who were these guys? Only one, Brewer, was a high school All-America, and with stars Matt Walsh, David Lee and Anthony Roberson returning to the 2004-05 squad, none was expected to stand out right away. So late on most evenings, the suitemates played brutal games of two-on-two, and, during practice, Billy D would sometimes pit them and a lethal shooter named Lee Humphrey The friends moved in together again before the next season and talked about their summers. Taurean said that when he asked for earrings again, his dad had mumbled, "Win a championship, you can get as many earrings as you want."

Joakim had bigger news: He was married. While visiting family in Cameroon, his grandfather had arranged a wedding with a villager. "Are you serious?" Taurean asked. "What's her name?"

"Ndongo," Joakim said.

Taurean started to cackle, and Joakim's stateside girlfriend started to panic, until Noah assured them he was kidding. "When I talk about Africa, I can say whatever I want," he says. "I can say, 'I used to go to class on a giraffe,' and people will buy it."

Ndongo became the team's battle cry. Before tense games, Taurean and Joakim yelled it in the tunnel. Before nerve-racking free throws, Joakim approached a teammate on the line and said, "Come on, let's go. Ndongo." After victories, they howled it to the fans. "People thought we were crazy," Noah says.

They were a team of characters. Horford saw blood on his jersey after a game against Vanderbilt and told the media, "That's Vanderbilt blood. I don't bleed." Joakim had a tooth elbowed out by Tennessee, and when the dentist said, "Now I can fix the gap between your front teeth," Noah told him hell no; his father and his father's father had the same gap, and he cherished it. Stars and subs mingled during barbecues at Billy D's house or in Billy D's office. "Soon, everyone knew everything about everyone," says reserve center Chris Richard.

Everyone knew their roles, too. Joakim provided the energy, Taurean (goodbye, Apple Turnover) pushed the tempo. Al was the enforcer who told players where to be (which is why the coach called him The Godfather), while Corey did the slashing. The fifth starter, Humphrey, was unstoppable beyond the arc, even if he had to be coaxed to fire away. It all just fit. By March, Billy D's mantra in the huddle was "Layups, dunks and Lee Humphrey."

Sure enough, in the national title game, Humphrey hit four three-point daggers, while Noah had many of the layups and dunks and was named the Most Outstanding Player. During Final Four weekend, he'd heard a UCLA cheerleader say she liked him, so he blew kisses to her in the last minutes of the championship game.

The team was greeted in Gainesville by thousands. What a celebration. Billy D finally turned off his BlackBerry. Joakim's father gave him an African mask to hang in the locker room. A 40-year-old woman asked Corey to autograph her breasts. Taurean ran to the mall to buy earrings. Ndongo.

LIFE IS always more complicated after you win. The president wants to see you, except you don't want to see him. The media wants to see you, except you'd rather the media see your teammates. The NBA wants to see you, except you attended a Knicks-Nets game the previous Christmas … and hated it.

And that's where we reconnect with Joakim Noah and his suitemates. Joakim might have gone No. 1 overall, Al might have gone top-five, Corey top-25. An NBA buddy of theirs even said, "Y'all are hot, you got to go." But once Noah was certain about staying, they all were.

That meant a life change. After they came home from Indianapolis, whenever the guys walked through campus, they were mobbed by schoolmates and parents of schoolmates seeking autographs. A campus talk show host jokingly petitioned to have a street renamed Joakim Noah Road. They needed security to attend the Gators' spring football game.

Frankly, it blew Joakim's mind. Two years before, when he was blaring Marley on his boom box and wearing an African smock, everyone thought he was peculiar. Now fans followed him into restrooms. Now he was more than happy to wear headphones. "Grown men would cry and say, 'Thank you for that night,' " he says. "I don't know what that means. Like you were more than a person."

When the foursome returned to campus late this summer, they moved into adjoining rooms again, then updated one another over a game of C-low. Taurean got a new car, Al had worked on his left hand. Corey played a ton of golf. But Joakim talked about visiting his father in France and hearing French fans ask, "Why didn't you go to the NBA. You scared?" That wasn't it. That Knicks-Nets game had no energy. He knew as a pro he might have teammates who shot 30 times a game; at Florida, players feel guilty if they shoot two straight. "It's not their life, it's my life," Noah says about those who questioned him. "Maybe I'll be the 20th pick in the draft next year. That's okay. I'm living the good life. We're trying to defend our championship. People are going to love it. We're going to love it. What else can I ask for?"

His championship high was over, and feeling depressed, he went to see Billy D again. "Coach is like a second father," Noah says.

Billy was sympathetic. He understood that one three-week tournament had changed Jo's life. Now, people expected him to be the NBA's Next Big Thing. And it wasn't fair because Jo had no real perimeter skills and no real go-to move. He saw that Jo was stressed and that he was almost 20 pounds overweight, and sensed his star was wondering, "Where do I go from here?" So Billy D reminded him why he came back. He asked what he always asked: "What about the guys?"

Joakim just wanted to be left alone, but realized he had to snap out of it. The team needed him to be himself again, the guy who says "peace" instead of "goodbye," the guy who asks 7-year-old ball boys, "What kind of hip-hop you like?" He did a lot of thinking. He listened to John Lennon's "Imagine" over and over. He enrolled in a spirituality class that taught yoga and Phil Jackson's book Sacred Hoops. He thought about this year's Tennessee game, and how he owed the Vols for knocking that tooth out. He thought about this year's Kentucky game, and how he owed their fans for chanting, "Noah's gay, Noah's gay." He realized he needed to get his Ndongo back and Billy knew it too.

Then it happened. The team played two exhibition games near Niagara Falls in Canada over Labor Day weekend, and at a postgame party at a lake, Joakim asked if he could go waterskiing. In the dark.

Any other coach would have said no. Any other roommates would have said no. What, let him tear up his knee and risk a chance to repeat and an NBA career?

But Billy D said go ahead, what the heck. Joakim put on the skis and asked Taurean, "Should I use my African side or my Viking side?"—whatever that meant—then disappeared into the night. Billy D said, "Oh well, there goes 14 points and nine boards."

Except guess who came back, 15 minutes later, in one piece: the African Viking, flashing a gap-toothed smile that had gone missing. Mobbed by Al, Taurean and Corey. Mobbed by the entire team.

Today Ndongo, tomorrow the world.

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