Incidentally, young NBA players learned the same lesson during the Michael Jordan era. Jordan was a notorious trash talker on the court. He would goad defenders into dialogue, but the problem was that if you talked back it inspired Jordan to blow you off the court. The only thing to do was to let Jordan talk and play your game. Try to keep some of the beast asleep. Then he would just score his thirty points and move on to the next game. But if you woke the beast, Mike would score fifty and then do it again next time you played him.
