Re: Larry Who??

[Matt Healy <mhealy@welchlink.welch.jhu.edu>]

>Nobody said Larry didn't talk trash, but if you saw the movie it made
>Larry look like Reggie when he taunted Spike and the NY fans in New
>York. Larry talked to the guys he was playing not acting the fool to the
>fans. The sole purpose of the movie was to show how Rodman is just
>misunderstood and show him in his best light. It made Larry look like a
>low class person IMO. Good athletes will always talk smack to each other
>as it is part of the game and I can live with that but when you show a
>depiction of a game I watched and it is totally skewed from what I saw
>and what actually happened well thats pushing it a bit much. Later.Mike
>

This is right on the money.  Larry was widely accepted as the biggest trash
talker of the mid-80's, I believe.  I don't think that was covered up at
all.  But it wasn't the self-gratifying, screaming and self-worship or
trying to humiliate an opponent just because he dunked, which is what you
see in the majority of trash talk today.  Larry was cocky, to be sure, and
being the best player in the game, its hard not to have some measure of
confidence.  But I think you lose something in the translation if you
compare his actions with the antics we see today, its just not the same
thing.  And it was nothing like the nonsense portrayed in the Rodman trash
movie.  My favorite Larry trash-talk was from a story told by someone who
was trying to defend him.  It wasn't in your face stuff, but things like
when you guard him, he'd start yelling "Mismatch here!  Mismatch!."  By the
way, it was Michael Jordan who recounted this experience.

Matt