Joakim Noah Not Too Worried About Kevin Garnett's Trash-Talk Routine

With so much talk surrounding trash talk in the NBA as of late, it's no surprise that the controversy is going to follow Kevin Garnett to every city he travels to in the near future, and that was just the case as the Boston Celtics met and lost to the Chicago Bulls, 100-99.

Garnett famously enraged Carmelo Anthony so much with his trash talk that Carmelo tried to track him down after the game and confront him.

Then, in an attempt to awkwardly defend Anthony, New York Knicks owner James Dolan had microphones set up around the court to eavesdrop on conversations going on during games. What that accomplished, I have no idea.

Nonetheless, there has been something made out of trash talk in the past few weeks that we don't normally hear about, so we've been subject to hearing about the ins and outs of everything Garnett says when he's on the court lately, or at least what players think about it.

Surprisingly, Joakim Noah doesn't think there's much to it, even though he has called Garnett a dirty player in the past. He says he realizes something now that he didn't realize in the past (h/t Chris Forsberg, ESPN.com):

"

I feel like I was young, maybe talking a little bit too much. What happens on the court should stay on the court and I was pretty vocal about it but at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is winning or losing basketball games. It doesn't matter, you don't have to like your opponents, it's all right.

When we lose, I feel like he crosses the line. But since we've been beating their a**, I'm cool with it.

"

That pretty much hits the nail on the head, doesn't it?

At some point you have to realize that talking is a part of the game. If you don't like what a player is saying about you, or even your family, it's not your responsibility to make a public show about it—it's your responsibility to take it to him on the court.

In the end, it's always better to beat a player with your game and make him look bad than to try to start some guff with a player off the court and make yourself look bad.

Or you know, your team's owner could just throw microphones around the court and call shenanigans at every naughty word thrown your way.