ALBANY – What you can print in a newspaper and what you can say on a basketball court are drastically different, so with all due respect, I’m going to need you to use your (bleeping) imagination a little.
We’re talking out the (bleeping) trash, putting the kibosh on all this tired discourse about smack talk.
If I ruled the world, I’d establish a moratorium on the topic after Monday’s Iowa-LSU Elite Eight matchup in the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament, a rematch of last season’s electrifying championship, which the Tigers won 102-85. Together, the teams put on a show for a record TV audience of 9.9 million viewers and blew many tender minds.
Epiphanies were had: Who knew women could hoop like that?
Also: Who knew women talked like that?
Pearls were crushed in stupefied palms, sensitive shock jocks on the airwaves and online expressed their utter astonishment – shocked, shocked were they that LSU’s Angel Reese would go out of her way in the game’s final moments to direct a “you-can’t-see-me” gesture at Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, who’d famously used it herself.
Little secret: That whiff of women trash-talking really got the people talking, bore deep into the American psyche, rent-free – real valuable real estate for a pastime with growing appeal.
Angel Reese just hit Caitlin Clark with the “you can’t see me” pic.twitter.com/POazWMwAbM
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) April 2, 2023
“At the end of the day, if that’s what people want to complain and talk about, it is what it is,” said LSU’s Hailey Van Lith (who wasn’t a Tiger at this time last year, and felt the emotions of that game through her TV like you and me).
“But that doesn’t mean we’re going to change.”
What’s more: “I think enough people enjoy it,” she said, with a nod to the record attendance and viewership across this season. “Because women’s basketball is doing better than it’s ever done.”
And now all the talking about the talking has served its purpose.
So, new rule: Don’t ask the ladies anything you wouldn’t ask a gentleman.
This is me asking my hardworking and typically well-meaning colleagues: Would you tee up a press conference question for Patrick Beverley or Russell Westbrook like what Reese got Sunday morning: “I’m wondering, do you use (trash talk) as part of your strategy or to try to get opponents off their game?”
Oh, I wish you would! But if not, then do not.
Imagine that Reese (who earlier this tournament waved bye-bye to a Middle Tennessee player who fouled out) was Luka Doncic. (The Dallas Mavericks star just waved at Sacramento Kings general manager Vlade Divac after hitting a free throw to beat his team, and then he walked off the court chirping, “He shoulda drafted me!”)
Luka Doncic as he puts away the Kings tonight in Sacramento with his final free throw, then as the final horn sounds, waves goodbye to former Kings GM Vlade Divac seated courtside and says “he shoulda’ drafted me.” pic.twitter.com/6j26cLprxA
— Sean Cunningham (@SeanCunningham) March 30, 2024
Doncic gets questions about that part of his game often enough, but those queries reflect how normal it is that a maniacally competitive athlete might score some points with his bark as well as from beyond the arc: Say, “Do you think you are the best trash talker on the team?”
Doncic’s response was to throw some good-natured shade at the loving and lovable Serbian center Boban Marjanovic, who likely leads the league in conversations with janitors who literally take out the trash at NBA arenas: “It’s not Boban, for sure — maybe it’s Boban, but just against me.”
Now, listen. Maybe you, like Doncic and LSU coach Kim Mulkey, were a trash talker in your day? Or maybe you, like Boban or Iowa’s Lisa Bluder, were not?
Maybe the kids you coach get away with a “too-small” gesture now and then, or maybe there’d be no amount of time between the childish taunt and that kid finding his butt on the bench.
Maybe you dig it. Maybe you hate it.
But I wonder, if the things the women say out there are making you blush, whether you’ve ever been within earshot of their male counterparts, whose in-game dialogue is mostly a stream of get-that-(bleep)-out-of-here? Even the refs’ grandmas caught strays from Philadelphia 76ers guard Kelly Oubre recently.
So Reese’s NSFW commentary aimed at the UCLA bench Saturday after she fouled out? Basically: What are you talking about? That call was soft — but delivered with a little more, uh, pizzazz.
Maybe you dig that, maybe you hate that, but probably you should accept it. It’s basketball; it’s been basketball. Women are going to partake too. It’s only fair, don’t you think?
UCLA center Lauren Betts does, last week she answered one of those questions from me: “It should be looked at the same as if men’s basketball players are doing it,” she said. “They do it all the time – what’s the difference?”
“One of the greatest memories I ever have as a former player – won’t ever forget it – 1984 Olympics,” Mulkey said. “I had front row seats watching Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Bill Walton, the list goes on, play against our ’84 Olympic team. Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, you can go get the list. I was in heaven. The crap that came out of those guys’ mouths! I couldn’t quit watching. It’s sports. It’s sports!
“I mean,” Mulkey added, “have you ever thought watching games in the NCAA playoffs how much you could write about a lot of players and the stuff that’s come out of their mouths, not just Angel and not just Clark?”
Maybe it’d make the men’s tournament more interesting?
But, no. Accept it for what it is. Sports. With all due respect. With so much respect.
“For me, my competitive passion is just all about the game,” said Clark, the college game’s all-time leading scorer with 3,830 points and counting, when she was inevitably asked about trash talk Sunday.
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“Respect,” said Reese – whose nine consecutive double-doubles have her tied with Courtney Paris for the most in March Madness history – in response to another one of those questions.
“I don’t think people realize it’s not personal,” Reese said. “I think people just take it like we hate each other. Me and Caitlin Clark don’t hate each other. I want everybody to understand that. It’s just a super competitive game. … I have plenty of friends on the court that I talk to outside of the game, but like when I get between those lines, we’re not friends. We’re not buddies. I’m going to talk trash to you. I’m going to do whatever it takes to get in your head the whole entire game, but after the game we can kick it. I don’t think people really realize that.
“That’s fine. I’ll take the villain role. I’ll take the hit for it. But I know we’re growing women’s basketball. If this is the way we’re going to do it, then this is the way we’re going to do it.”
