Well, if you’re going to talk trash to Michael Jordon, this is kind of what you deserve.
This past weekend at Kansas Speedway during the NASCAR Cup Series race, Denny Hamlin found himself battling his own driver at the end of the race, which Tyler Reddick ultimately won. But his boss, Denny, was ahead with just a handful of laps to go, though Reddick managed to run him down and even pass his boss – before he ran out of fuel and scraped the wall with just three laps to go.
Denny of course, drives the #11 car for Joe Gibbs Racing, but is also the co-owner of 23XI Racing alongside NBA legend Michael Jordan, and owns the #45 car of Tyler Reddick along with the #23 car of Bubba Wallace and the #35 car of Riley Herbst.
Reddick was able to switch to the secondary fuel pump and keep his car running, somehow only falling back to second place, but the chance to win appeared to be out the window.
That is, until the last-place car of Cody Ware blew a tire and spun out as leaders were coming to the white flag, bringing out a caution and sending the race into overtime.
Everybody came down pit road during the caution, with the leaders taking two tires (and, importantly for Reddick, some more gas), and on the restart Kyle Larson managed to get by both Hamlin and Reddick and appeared to be on his way to a win. But Hamlin and Reddick raced each other hard, and even after falling back to fourth at one point, Reddick somehow passed Larson in the final turn to score his fifth win of the season.
It was a pretty wild finish to what was an otherwise pretty boring race, and afterwards Michael Jordan made it clear that he planned to do some trash talking to his 23XI Racing co-owner:
“I’m racing against Denny. So in essence, I really wanted to beat him because I know we’re going to talk a lot of trash a little bit later. But it was a good race.”
Denny, however, clearly wasn’t in the mood to hear the trash talking, and cameras captured MJ walking up to Denny on pit road after the race, and…well, his reaction said it all. It became a mega viral clip, and obviously, everyone wanted the tea because there was clearly more to it:
And during an episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast yesterday, Hamlin explained that there was a hefty amount of trash talking on his end leading up to the race, and of course, Jordan thought it was hilarious that Hamlin’s own driver beat him, especially after all of that:
“Yeah I told him on Friday the same thing I said on this podcast. If something weird doesn’t happen, it’s a guaranteed win. Michael said, you know, ‘Yeah, I’m worried about the 11, Denny says he’s gonna win.’ And I was telling him all weekend that we were gonna win.
He’s very happy because of how much s*** I talked to him, actually. I know it’s hard to believe, but I talk a lot of trash to him. When it’s head-to-head, he wants to see the 23XI drivers beat me, because, you know because I talk that trash.”
Clearly, it was all in good fun, but Denny wasn’t laugh too much in the immediate aftermath… but like I said, if you talk s*** to the GOAT, you have to accept any and all consequences. MJ’s hyper competitive, almost insanely competitive, reputation is well know. He’s a world class trash talker himself… so if Denny is gonna be chirping Jordan, he’s gonna have to eat it when the 23XI beats him.
He asked fans in the caption of the video he shared explaining this on Instagram to “stop sending” him the clip, and I have a feeling people are going to be talking about this for a while… it’s too good:
