Thoughts on sporting spirit and trash talk

Trash talking in basketball, and other sports, seems to have increased in recent years. Some are of the view that basketball suffers as a result. One proposition is that the use of talk in basketball counters customs of fair play or what used to be called "sportsmanship". Another is that sporting competition has changed from one in which the athletes competed with their athletic basketball skill, to one in which the athletes also compete with verbal skills. There is often an implied premise that only those with weaker athletic basketball skills resort to talk in lieu of absent athletic basketball skills and to compensate for inadequate athletic basketball skill. There are however instances of the world's best basketball players trash talking. However, this occurence does not mean there has not been an increase in the use of talk by average basketball players. There is also a proposition that talking in basketball is sufficiently similar to other psychological advantages sought by basketball teams, such as a home court with stands full of sympathetic spectators, to be acceptable. The proposition assumes that seeking psychological advantages are legitimatly part of athletic competition. One trash talking approach is to attempt to use talk to lessen the ability of the basketball opponent to concentrate on the basketball game. Rather than concentrating on playing basketball with their athletic skills, an attempt is made to change their concentration to thinking about the talk they have heard or talking themselves.