In order to further illustrate “dirty talks” by using Speech-act Theory, I will take another typical “dirty talks”
example in NBA. In 2012-2013 NBA regular season, when Boston Celtics was playing against New York Knicks,
after a fierce body contact, Celtics’ power forward Kevin Garnett purposefully whispered dirty talks in the ears of
Knicks’ small forward Camelo Anthony. Clearly, Camelo thought these trash words were not just a provocation as
dirty talks usually intended, but completely crossed the line. As a consequence, Camelo was extremely furious and
wrathful and thus lost his temper. No sooner had he heard these trash words than he pushed hard to Kevin with his
mouth talking unstoppable dirty words back. At this time, Kevin, the canny and sophisticated veteran player just
raised up his arms, kept his mouth closed, and stepped backwards to pretend that he was innocent in this conflict.
Camelo followed Kevin all the way from the baseline to midcourt as they jawed at each other following the play,
leading to technical fouls on both players by the referees’ immediately stepping forward between them, pulling them
apart in case of an ensuing fight which might become out of control in the end. After this interlude, Knicks led by
Camelo lost the game to Celtics by virtue of Kevin’ immoral but tactical provocation which totally made Camelo
distracted in the remaining game, with at last had 20 points but shot 6 of 26 while battling his temper. Comparing
with Camelo’s averaging 34.4 points in his last 10 games and having a pair of 40-point performances last week, his
performance in this game was completely disqualified and abnormal. This time, “Dirty talks” strategy again took a
magical effect that disturbed the opponent player and helped the team win the game. Usually, “dirty talks” only
happened on court and would have no aftermath after the game. But the funny thing was that even after the game,
Camelo was still extremely furious about Kevin’s talks, and couldn’t let it go. He tried several times to breakthrough
the body guards in order to enter the Knicks’ locker room, trying to face Kevin and beat his ass off, but failed. His
ensuing deeds were unprecedented and quite surprising to everyone. After failed to fight with Kevin in the locker
room, he managed to stop the bus which Knicks’ players were going to take back to the hotel, and succeeded to meet
face to face with Kevin. If not the teammates and other court staff interfered in and mediated into the quarrel, and
pulled them apart with all strength, a sharp altercation and confrontation was inevitable.