NBA games of the week: Enes Kanter trash talks the world

This edition of the NBA games of the week is brought to you by Enes Kanter, newly anointed saint of trash talk.

Trash talk is a touchy subject. Ask one person, and they’ll say trash talk is a classless way to approach a game. It’s meta in the quality it adds to a matchup. How can anything involved with the word trash be good for sports? Sports are about performance, and if you’re talking, then you aren’t playing, or something like that I envision a 60-year-old geezer explaining to me while I call that kid a noob in Call of Duty.

Ask another person, and trash talk isn’t classless so much as a weapon. In sports, competition is so high, and when you reach the stratosphere of talent only a handful of people can match, any edge is a good one. Psychological edges do exist, whether positive or negative. Michael Jordan was notorious for his trash talk, even go so far as to possibly ruining two NBA careers — Muggsy Bogues and Kwame Brown — with his relentless verbal assaults.

I fall on the second side of trash talk. To me, it’s an automatic good and at least a two-point swing on my 10-point scale of any player. If LeBron talked Draymond Green level smack, then the scale would probably break. Even if I dislike most things about a player, odds are I’ll eventually come around if they talk smack. For example, Baker Mayfield was a player I didn’t really like. Then he planted the Oklahoma Sooners’ flag at midfield at Ohio State, got dissed for a pregame handshake and got offended when the opposing team didn’t quite remember who their daddy was.

https://twitter.com/Enes_Kanter/status/954857522220883969

Enes Kanter has ascended in to the realm of trash talk. He started out as the ultimate teammate. Now he trash talks places like Salt Lake City and 21-year-old players on awful teams. I admit I had a gripe with a trash-talking bench player who was unplayable in postseason series because they are such liabilities, but god damn if I don’t fall in love with the trash talk every time. It’s like Herman Boone said in Remember the Titans: “[Trash talk] is like Novocaine. Just give it time, always works.” Now I’m a full blown Kanter convert and here to hope it lasts forever.

(This all goes with strictly Kanter on the court. Off the court, he became a wanted man in his home country of Turkey because he’s standing up against the country’s president. At any age, that’s admirable, but to continue to do it at 25-years-old while having your father taken into custody on your behalf is a contribution to the world I hope to achieve a fraction of one day.)

So, this version of the NBA games of the week are brought you by Kanter, and players he could add to his trash-talking list.