The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Dallas Mavericks 108-95 on Sunday night, in large part to the Lakers’ excellent defense.
A huge part of that defensive gameplan was keyed around stopping MVP candidate Luka Doncic of the Mavericks. The Lakers did well there, with Doncic having one of the worst nights of his season.
L.A. might have also had a little help getting in Doncic’s head, thanks to former Lakers great Kobe Bryant, who was sitting courtside at the game and isn’t afraid to talk trash to, well, anybody.
During the game, Bryant was shown trash talking Doncic to the point that Doncic actually turned around. When he realized who was doing the smack talk, he smiled and dapped up Bryant.
After the game, however, Doncic revealed that it wasn’t just standard trash talk … Bryant was riffing in Slovenian, Doncic’s native language.
“He was talking Slovenian,” Doncic said. “So I was like, who is talking my language? And I saw Kobe, and I was really surprised.”
Does Bryant know Slovenian from having grown up in Italy and spending a lot of time in Europe? Or is he just such a competitive lunatic that he went and learned Slovenian trash talk so he could give Doncic crap in a game that he wasn’t even playing in?
The world may never know. Honestly, neither would surprise me.
