What happened to the talkers?

[NJNJ]

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Before the Rockets played the Knicks a few weeks back, Houston forward Carl Landry warned his brother, New York forward Marcus Landry, that it was going to be a long night. "I know every move you do, and I'm going to stop it," Carl boasted. "I'm telling all my teammates your favorite go-to moves and countermoves."

 

Carl, however, didn't deliver this riff orally. He sent it via text message.

 

Such is the sorry state of trash talk in the NBA today. There was a time not all that long ago when the ability to spew verbal shrapnel was as much a part of a player's basketball repertoire as his dribbling ability or crossover skills. Stars talked smack. Scrubs talked smack. Fans talked smack. Even refs talked smack. Told he was having an off night, longtime official Earl Strom once responded to a player, "I guarantee that you've missed more shots tonight than I've missed calls."

 

Today? Sit courtside at an NBA game and you won't hear much more than the squeak of sneakers and the tweet of the whistles. Oh, the players still have plenty to say -- as any of, say, Kevin Durant's 107,000 Twitter followers can attest. Nor is it the case that the NBA has entered an era of modesty and civility, not so long as players are bringing guns into locker rooms and allegedly threatening to ventilate each other with bullets over gambling debts.

 

But for whatever reason, trash-talk has become the equivalent of a dance step that's fallen out of vogue. One player blames technology. "Everybody picks up on everything and stuff goes viral and gets blown out of proportion, so you're better off not making controversy." To prove his point, he then asks not to be quoted by name.

 

It's hard to trace the origins of trash-talk. But by the mid-1980s, NBA games featured more chatting than a class taught by a substitute teacher. In Boston, Larry Bird was seldom shy about self-aggrandizing. During one game against the Sonics, Bird scored over Xavier McDaniel with two seconds left. Bird then turned to McDaniel and deadpanned, "Damn! I didn't mean to leave any time left on the clock."

 

In Chicago, Michael Jordan, clenched his teeth behind his smile and often asserted his superiority. As Doug Collins, who coached Jordan both in Chicago and Washington, put it: "When you play Michel Jordan, you have to stand up to him physically, but you have to stand up to him mentally as well because he will torment you."

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[Poe]

They all went to the Celtics.