Patrick Beverley is a persistent pest, but Ja Morant is not scared.

The Timberwolves and Grizzlies are facing off in the first round of the NBA playoffs in a series that promises to have a lot of drama. Beverley, fresh off a characteristically tenacious performance where the Wolves dusted his former Clippers team in the play-in tournament — and profanely crowed about it afterwards — also has reasons to be motivated to aggravate the Grizzlies.

Memphis traded for Beverley this past offseason, but swapped him to Minnesota before he ever played a game for the Grizzlies.

Morant, speaking to reporters this week, had no sense of fear of Beverley.

“I ain’t ducking no smoke,” Morant said. “We run up the chimney. Simple as that. Ain’t no conversations about not letting nobody get under your skin. If somebody comes towards you, you can’t back down. That’s a soft person tendency. We don’t got no soft guys over here.”

Morant and Beverley had a trash-talking exchange when the teams played each other back in January. In February, after the Wolves defeated the Grizzlies, Beverley crowed on Twitter.

“Damn Memphis Grizz no dancing or talking crazzzy tonight huh,” he tweeted with the “hmm” emoji. “[A]wwww ok Good Luck rest of the way.”

It got a little bit overshadowed by how far the Phoenix Suns ran ahead of the rest of the league, but the Grizzlies had the second-best record in the NBA this season, at 56-26. This was in spite of Morant, who at one point was a contender to win the MVP award, missing 25 games with injuries.

Definitely get your popcorn ready for some physicality in this series.