Throughout its long history, the NBA has had some phenomenal trash talkers. We see it today with guys like Anthony Edwards and Luka Doncic, but they’re only the latest in a proud lineage of guys who could not only wreck you on the court, they’d let you know about it, too.
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Luka updated his trash-talking resume in Thursday’s 142-130 home win over the Bulls. He dropped a season-high 51 in that one and fell just one assist short of a triple-double, but afterwards, the most noteworthy part of his performance was how he had put young Bulls star Matas Buzelis in his place.
Buzelis is a promising young player and one of the few reasons Bulls fans have to be hopeful about the future, but he poked the bear when he decided to talk some trash to Luka early in the game. Needless to say, it didn’t go so well for him.
“I don’t even know what to say, honestly,” he said. “He started killing, obviously, when I started talking to him.” Ever the gentleman, Luka declined to reveal what Buzelis said that set him off.
This incident prompted a fun discussion on the most recent episode of No Fouls Given as Paul Pierce revealed the guys during his day that he didn’t dare talk trash to.
“Jordan’s number one,” he said. “Just shut the hell up. Don’t talk s*** to Shaq, please don’t. Don’t do it. He might tear the rim off that day.”
Pierce’s nickname was “The Truth,” and there’s no lie detected here. Michael Jordan was known as the most competitive man alive, to the point that he used to invent trash talk from opponents just to motivate himself to destroy whoever dared guard him. Shaq is the most fearsome physical presence in basketball history and the most likely one to actually murder someone by dunking on them.
Danny Green suggested Kobe Bryant as the third name on Pierce’s list, but while Pierce and Kobe had some great battles against each other, he went in a different direction. “You gotta say Gary Payton,” he said, “’cause he’s just gonna talk you down all night. Don’t say nothing to him, aw man, he gonna wear you down, I know that for a fact.”
Payton was known to never lose a trash-talking battle, and with his defensive chops that earned him the nickname of “The Glove,” he could back it up by suffocating opposing players not only with his ability to pick their pockets, but his relentless wordcraft. Pierce remembered one time he said something early in a game to Payton and immediately regretted it.
“When I tell you he didn’t stop the whole game,” he lamented. “I was done, dog.”
Later in Payton’s career, he came to Boston and became Pierce’s teammate. Even though he was 36 years old and nearing the end of the line, he was still barking. “Something happened where I said something to him again in practice,” Pierce said. “I said, ‘Man shut up GP, I’ma beat your a**.”
“He musta said, ‘WELL DO IT THEN!'” Pierce laughed. “He was like, ‘WELL WHATCHOU WANNA DO?!’ just loud as hell.”
Just as Buzelis was taught a lesson by Luka last week, Payton reinforced one to Pierce all those years ago that he was not someone to trifle with. That was over 20 years ago, but Pierce remembers it so well that he had to include Payton on his list today. If Buzelis gets a podcast a couple decades from now, we know one name that will be on his list.
