NBA legend Larry Bird was not only one of the best basketball players of all time, but he also was one of the meanest trash talkers the game has ever seen. Most importantly he used to back it up on the court.
Fellow NBA legend Gary Payton was asked about former player JJ Redick about Bird’s trash talking as the two shared a couple of years in the league.
“He was cold, man,” the Glove said on The Old Man & the Three podcast. “He’d tell you, like … ‘I don’t know what you got for Christmas, but I know what I gonna give you. What I’m gonna do is I’m gonna take on this block, I’m gonna dribble two times and the I’m gonna pull up in your face in the neck and say and then that’s your Christmas present for me.’ I’m just like ‘Whoa!’ …
“He used to tell you where he gonna shoot it in your face and how you couldn’t stop him and how you ain’t no good to him. I was like ‘Whoa, man, that’s just a little bit disrespectful’ and then it’ll happen. That’s the whole cold thing about it. Everybody used to say Larry Bird was slow and all that game. I don’t care what nobody said, he had the ultimate game and he used to do it.”
