NBA Players Don’t Need to Take Out Trash

Tim Hardaway of the Golden State Warriors says he’s the best trash talker in the NBA--with a nod to Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and recently retired Larry Bird. “It’s just a way to get somebody off their game,” Hardaway told George Shirk of the San Francisco Chronicle. “It’s trying to get them to do something to lose the game, and that’s what trash talking is all about.”

Hardaway admires the trash-talking styles of Jordan and Bird.

“Michael Jordan will say stuff like ‘Get out of that zone; you can’t play play zone on me.’ Or Bird, he’d say stuff like, ‘You can’t stick with me, I’m the greatest shooter in the world.’ ”

Trivia time: Name the only year that UCLA was unbeaten and untied in football.

The hotter the better: Perhaps a reason for the rejuvenation of the Dallas Cowboys is the rugged practices run by Coach Jimmy Johnson.

“His idea of nice day is one so hot that Lawrence of Arabia would refuse to work,” writes Galyn Wilkins of the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram.

Instant celebrity: Toronto Blue Jay catcher Ed Sprague on when he knew his life had changed because of his game-winning home run in the World Series: “When I turned on the Home Shopping Network and they were selling my rookie card.”

Career cut short: Enos (Country) Slaughter, who played in five World Series with the St. Louis Cardinals and New York Yankees, is 76. He was still a part-time player for the Yankees in 1958 at 42.

“If they’d brought the designated hitter in, I think I could have hit until I was 45, or 50,” Slaughter told the Washington Post. “I never did lose my eye or timing for swinging the bat, and I could still run.”

Counterpoint: William C. Rhoden of the New York Times doesn’t agree with writers who suggest that Deion Sanders should stay with one sport.

“Curiously, many of the same writers who advocate that Sanders adhere to sports monogamy are dabbling quite heavily themselves in other communications mediums.

“There is a proliferation of columnists and reporters, for example, doing television, radio and whatever else they can get their hands on. Indeed, why don’t they stick to one discipline?”

Successful stiffs: Philadelphia 76er Coach Doug Moe repeated an assertion he made last year that the NBA champion Chicago Bulls are “a bunch of stiffs playing with Michael Jordan.”

“On their own, they’re not great players,” Moe told the Miami Herald. “They’re stiffs. You think that, without Jordan, they’d be challenging for a championship? Gimme a break.”

We didn’t realize that Scottie Pippen is a “stiff.”

Trivia answer: 1954, when UCLA shared the national championship with Ohio State.

Quotebook: Clipper Coach Larry Brown, joking on CNN about his overweight players, John Williams and Stanley Roberts: “Our front line is bigger than any line in the NFL. We’re trying to figure out if our three-man front is better than our four-man front.”