I will never forget at the celebration after the first championship Joakim Noah at the end "oh and we be back"! A very special group and although a repeat may happen again, it will never be like this with the same cast of characters!
Def makes it more special that it was the same 5 in my opinion, definition of a true team. I remember watching them in 05 at Madison square in that tourney and thinking oh we got something here.
Yeah, watching us take down Syracuse in MSG grabbed my attention. Not just that we won, but that we looked really good at every position. I knew we had good players in Corey and Al, both returning starters, but Joakim and Taurean really stood out after rarely getting court time the previous season, and Lee played such tenacious defense. Taurean, IIRC, had his coming-out party, torching it from 3 for 20+ points. And when the Orange tried to curtail his shooting, the dime he dropped to a slashing Joakim for the thunder dunk was awesome. The Syracuse fans looked shocked. Coming into the season, after losing Matt Walsh, Anthony Roberson, and David Lee, my feeling was that we would have struggle of a season. My immediate reaction after MSG was that we looked like one of the top dozen teams in the country. And we just kept getting better right up through the end of the season. When the 04s said "We back," my reaction was that everyone else in the country was playing for second place.
True and I think this team will stand a test of time as just an all time great, special group for sure.
2006 FF vs GMU: My 12y/o Rock-ribbed Gator fan son and I had a backpacking trip with our Knoxville, TN Boy Scout Troop that weekend. He was pissed to miss the game but I arranged for a colleague to send a text with the score of the game after it was over. I spent hours in the dark Saturday night, walking back and forth on a high ridge, holding my Nokia flip phone up, hoping to get a signal. Nothing. My son and I both bedded down frustrated at our ignorance of the outcome. Next day, same. No signal up on the mountaintop where we were. We broke camp Sunday morning and started to hike along, my phone tucked in a pocket of my backpack. Going down a narrow, rocky portion of the trail, I heard a faint *ding*. My son turned around and said "Was that your phone?" We dug it out breathlessly - and whooped to see the winning score. Watched it on the DVR when we got home, serene in knowledge of victory. I have a UCLA championship game story but I'll save that for later.
The ball movement in that game and the selfless and seamless teamwork that game just stuck out. Shot selection, efficiency and role contributions was just remarkable. It could have been a fluke but obviously it wasn't in hindsight.
