Larry Bird is regarded by many to be the greatest trash talker in NBA history, but Patrick Ewing thinks Michael Jordan is better at it. During an appearance on the Dan Patrick Show on Thursday, Ewing revealed Jordan still talks trash to him when they cross paths.
“Michael and I were friends,” Ewing said. “We got to meet each other in college… in high school, I should say. We developed a friendship. We stayed friends, still are friends today. But once we get on that floor, as you saw, it wasn’t just about the friendship. We’re both trying to kick each other’s butts.
“And he lets me know every time I see him, or I talk to him, that I was not able to beat him,” Ewing continued. “… People talk about Larry Bird talking trash, I think he’s probably the biggest trash talker that I ever been around.”
Jordan is arguably the biggest reason why we call Ewing one of the greatest players never to win a championship. He knocked him out of the playoffs time and time again.
Jordan’s Chicago Bulls eliminated Ewing’s New York Knicks from the playoffs in 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, and 1996. The Knicks did manage to knock the Bulls out in 1994, but that was during Jordan’s first retirement. If he were around, they weren’t winning.
Ewing has admitted he and the Knicks didn’t win a championship because they played in Jordan’s era. They had some very good teams, but just not good enough.
Jordan has been roasting Ewing for this for years at this point. These two were both in the first Space Jam movie, and Ewing revealed Jordan would constantly troll him and Charles Barkley on the set for not winning a championship.
Now, Jordan doesn’t have the kind of legendary trash-talking stories that we get about Bird, but there are still some pretty good ones. Most of the stories we actually hear about him are of players sharing how quickly they realized that trash-talking him was a bad idea. You did not want to poke this bear.
As for Bird, host Dan Patrick was a bit surprised that the Boston Celtics icon talked trash to Ewing as well. It turns out, he did a whole lot of it.
“Did he ever?” Ewing said. “I mean, if I saw Larry today, he’d still probably talk trash. I think that’s how we got to be friends with the Dream Team. He was talking so much trash. He talked trash when we played against each other, but back then, so now we were around with each other all the time, and he talks about how his team would always used to kick our butts, and I was more of a power forward than a center.
“And we just got into all these joking things, and we call ourselves the Harry and Larry show,” Ewing continued. “But Larry was a great competitor, a great teammate, and I got the opportunity to become good friends with him during that time.”
Ewing is right to think he’d do it even today, all these years after retiring. Former NBA head coach David Fizdale recounted Bird hilariously talking trash to Billy Knight decades after they last played each other. He just had a knack for it that we haven’t quite seen in anyone else.
