I mentioned the ESPN The Magazine article on Chris Taft last week. It is now on the ESPN site, but only for subscribers. Here’s some excerpts.
The next night against Memphis, he backs up his worldview – for a while, anyway. In the game’s first four minutes, he outjumps two Tigers for a putback, draws a foul as he faces up along the baseline and takes a pass as he streaks down the lane for a layup. He finishes the half with nine points, yapping the whole way, to lead Pitt to a double-digit lead.
But then, with the game in hand early in the second half, he suddenly shuts up and shuts down. After Tigers forward Joey Dorsey drives past Taft on consecutive possessions, Panthers coach Jamie Dixon pulls his big man. Dixon sends him back in a few minutes later, and Taft drops a couple of buckets, but soon his disinterested D has him back on the bench. Pitt still wins big and Taft finishes with his first double-double of the year (13 and 10), but he’s the first to admit it wasn’t exactly a star turn. “I know, I know, I stopped talking,” he says. “But we were up 20. Get them fools outta here.”
Trouble is, that game is an all-too-familiar snapshot of Taft’s career. When he’s feeling it, and letting everyone know he’s feeling it, he can roll over anyone. But when he gets bored, he gets beat. It’s why, as tightly as he controls every other aspect of his life, he knows better than to censor his words.
His mouth will lead the way. Who knows if his game will follow?
…Still, none of that explains why Taft often slips into neutral. In one of the team’s few tight games this season, a nine-point victory over Richmond in late December, Taft held back a Spiders rally with two monster blocks on consecutive stands. In between those plays, though, Taft backed down his man in the low post, but instead of breaking off one of those new moves for a game-busting bucket, he dished to freshman guard Ronald Ramon. Pitt failed to score. “We’ve tried to make it clear to him that he can’t take plays off,” says Dixon. “We need him and his intensity from start to finish.”
What’s so frustrating is Taft is always dropping tantalizing clues in practice of what could be. Like when he jumps for a layup, then resurfaces on the other side of the hoop to put back his miss before the rest of the team has left the ground. Or when he rides his 35-inch vert to throw down a tomahawk, looking down at his giggling teammates from above the rim as he finishes. “He’ll sometimes leave us wondering two things,” says assistant Pat Sandle. “How he did it, and why doesn’t he do it for a whole game? No one’s really seen what he can do.”
It’s that mix that will still make him a high draft pick, but with lots of risk.
