Best Trash Talkers In NBA History

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SteemSports Presenter:@mateonav53

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SteemSports Editor:@scottybuckets

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I love it when the NBA and NFL select a few worthy players to mic up during games in the playoffs or regular season. The innovation is fairly recent. The NFL still regularly provides some great Mic'd Up moments of heated trash talk, like this compilation that was put together on Richard Sherman. Mic'ing up players for a whole game wasn't around during the golden eras of NBA toughness (70's-90's), which is an unfortunate thing for us fans who enjoy a little banter.

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When we hear legendary instances of NBA trash talk, they aren't usually recorded Mic'd up moments. They're mostly anecdotes passed on through the years by other players, then bestowed onto the fans. These guys listed below are some of the greatest jaw-runners to ever do it. And if things ever escalated into a fight, they'd no doubt be the ones to step up to the occasion.

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Michael Jordan

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Even though he's the consensus greatest player ever in NBA history, Michael Jordan ranks with the best ever in terms of trash talk. He had a brash confidence in every word and movement in his professional career, but he was arguably at his most lethal when he was trash talking the guy guarding him one-on-one. One time Steve Smith was guarding him when all of the sudden, Michael started counting numbers backward to Steve, "38....36.....34". After a while, it dawned on Steve that MJ was counting down from 40! Michael kept his promise and got it all the way down to zero by the time the game ended.

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MJ also had a knack for terrorizing the Cleveland Cavalier's Craig Ehlo. First of all, he dropped his career-high 69-point game on him, but he would also state the exact move he was going to put on him before doing it. He was basically calling his shot every time and hitting it in Ehlo's face! Poor Ehlo. Hitting that shot over him in the playoffs was just the icing on the cake.

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Michael would demolish his enemies with his words, but he'd also use them to test his teammates. When he was playing on the Washington Wizards, his teammate Rip Hamilton chided Jordan saying that he wanted to have his own shoe on the Jordan Brand. Michael bluntly retorted back to Rip, "My shoes are for All-Stars". Rip actually used that as motivation to become an All-Star later on down the road. His exchanges with Rip were much friendlier than with his other Wizards teammate Kwame Brown. Kwame came into the league straight out of high school, but other than being big, he didn't have a natural knack for the game. That frustrated the hell out of Michael, who ultimately killed his confidence and pushed him out out the team by berating him mercilessly every day in practice.

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He would constantly berate the little guys to weed out the weak ones from his team, but he wasn't afraid of going against the big fish of the league at all. He would have constant verbal battles with the other great trash talking guards like Gary Payton and Reggie Miller. MJ got the better of them most of the time both on the scoreboard and in the court of verbal exchanges. There was also one notable time where Michael trash talked Magic Johnson and Larry Bird straight to their faces, and they had no response because they knew he was the superior one. Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan were team captains for the 1992 US Olympic Dream team. They pitted their squads against each other in a friendly scrimmage. Being the competitive forces that they were, the game got incredibly heated and Michael ultimately got the edge. After the game, Magic and Larry were hunched down, exhausted in the locker room. Michael Jordan saunters up to them and gleefully says, "There's a new sheriff in town boys". Magic and Larry shrugged, because they knew that in the end, Michael was right. There are so many great Michael Jordan instances of trash talk. These are just a few of the greats.

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Larry Bird

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Larry Bird is another all-time great with an all-time great resume of trash talk. During the three-point contest of one All-Star game in the 1980's, Larry Bird pulls up in the locker room right before the competition and confidently states to all his competitors, "Which one of you guys is coming in second?". Sure enough, he followed that up with a trophy in the 3-point contest that year.

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Larry Bird was a beast at trash talking one-on-one during a game too. One time he trash-talked Dr. J so badly that it led up to the infamous Celtics-Sixers fight where Charles Barkley held Larry in a choke hold while Dr. J punched him three times in the face. What did Larry say to get Dr. J so upset? He started repeating how many points that he had and how many Dr. J accumulated that night. It got as high as 42 for Bird, and only 6 for J. He couldn't have gotten in his head any more than that.

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Larry would even trash talk coaches if he thought they were disrespecting him. One time Bulls coach Doug Collins put a no-name player in to guard Larry himself, and Bird retorted with, "Ben Porquette, are you f***ing kidding me?" Bird went on to lay 33 on the Bulls in the first half alone. Just like Michael, Bird left an incredible legacy of trash talk on the league before he went out.

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Gary Payton

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Gary Payton was an absolute trash-talking machine. The man's mouth was always in trash talk mode. I'm surprised it never got exhausted from the constant jawing, but GP was born to talk, and he'd back it up with his play too. Shaq loves to recall that most guys would just trash talk you when they faced you on the floor, but Gary Payton would follow it up with trash talk in real life. He said you could run into Gary at a public place and he'd still roast you by recalling all the times that he got the better of you. And he'd do it in this slightly high-pitched schoolyard drawl that you know would get under the skin of those who went against him.

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Even though he has been retired for about a decade, Gary still has that trash talk fire burning deep within him. He's currently a coach of 3-Headed Monsters in Ice Cube's Big Three League. When Dahntay Jones of the opposing team was getting away with too much stuff, Gary started berating him from the coaches position on the sidelines and definitely got in his head! Check out that amazing exchange here

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Kevin Garnett

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Kevin Garnett was an intimidating force just by the sight of him. This giant bald guy with a permanent scowl hounding the painted area like a hungry lion, both on offense and defense. He supplemented his strong play with psychological terror in the form of trash talk. He was the one after all who created the name "Big Baby" for his teammate Glen "Big Baby" Davis after he made his own guy cry live on TV on the bench from just too much verbal abuse.

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One thing I miss about having Kevin Garnett in the league and on the court is hearing those off-hand yells picked up by the courtside mic. Like when he's trying to out-bully someone for a defensive rebound and he yells out "GET THAT SHIT OUTTA HERE". And who can forget the time he got under Carmelo Anthony's skin when he remarked about his wife, LaLa Anthony. Apparently the comment that got Anthony so riled up was when he said "LaLa tastes like honey-nut Cheerios"

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One of my favorite KG trash talk moments happened when he was out of an NBA uniform. When he was bantering back and forth with the TNT crew on his show, Area 21, Charles Barkley remarked that Kevin Garnett was a "borderline Hall-of-Famer". KG didn't stand for that comment and proceeded to interrupt his next sentence saying, "CHAMPION", referencing the fact that Barkley never won a ring in his career. He then followed up with, "You're a borderline champion Chuck."

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