Will a mid-range jump shooter who started the season in Shandong, China, save the 3-point happy Houston Rockets?
The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part…
Their silence said it all.
“I sat at home all summer with no phone call,” Michael Beasley said.
Thirty NBA teams signed veteran free agents, or rookies, or journeymen last offseason, and all 30 of them thought they could do better than Beasley, the second pick in the 2008 Draft. That included the Miami Heat, which was Beasley’s home last year, his third stint in South Florida.
Beasley knew most of the blame was his, his lack of development over the years in Miami and Minnesota and Phoenix the result of too much partying and not enough studying, the damage to his reputation — lowlighted by at least three arrests for marijuana possession since ’08, driving violations, a $25 million lawsuit (since dismissed) for false imprisonment — almost all at his own hand.
Even though he’s been clean drug-wise since 2013, the history still sat on him like a weight.
“I honestly thought the NBA, that chapter in my life was done,” Beasley said a few days ago. “…You go through stages. You get depressed. You get angry. You break stuff. You cry. You’re angry again. You get optimistic. You cry again. Last summer was probably the longest summer of my life. All I could do was pray, wake up, put one foot in front of the other and take it day by day.”
But, after spending the winter putting up huge numbers in Shandong, an eastern province on the China coast, playing for the Shandong Golden Stars of the Chinese Basketball Association, Beasley was signed by the desperate Rockets in early March as they searched for someone who could score in their desperate drive for the playoffs.
And, so far, the marriage of convenience has worked. Through 18 games, Beasley had been a godsend for Houston, averaging 13.4 points and 5.1 rebounds off the bench in 18.9 minutes a night. He’s stabilized the Rockets’ bench and given them a secondary ballhandler who plays well off of James Harden.
It is an unusual pairing. Under General Manager Daryl Morey, the Rockets’ embrace of the 3-pointer as their jump shot of choice has been clear. The worst shot in civilization in the 713 is a 20-footer, or any shot just inside the 3-point arc.
But the in-between game is where Beasley shines. Per NBA.com/Stats, only 108 of Beasley’s 196 shots since joining the Rockets — 55.5 percent — have come either in the paint/non-restricted area, or on mid-range shots. He’s only taken nine 3-pointers, or .04 percent of his shots.
By contrast, Rockets starting small forward Trevor Ariza had taken 839 shots, only 122 of his shots — 14.5 percent — were on those paint/non-restricted area or mid-range jumpers, while 488, or 58.4 percent, were 3-pointers.
But the Rockets have needed Beasley to be Beasley.
“He’s perfect for our team,” Rockets guard Patrick Beverley said. “The type of offense we run — open offense, shoot quick, stuff like that — he can put the ball in the basket with the best of them. So it works perfect for us coming off the bench, help with our bench scoring. He’s athletic and he helps us with our rebounding, also, so we don’t have to put a lot of pressure on Dwight (Howard) to get every rebound. It works. It really works.”
Beverley has known Beasley since they played together on the U.S. team in the FIBA Under-19 World Championships in Serbia in 2007 (a motley crew that also included a young Stephen Curry and DeAndre Jordan, and won the silver medal).
“We kept in touch,” Beverley said. “Our kids are friends with each other. He’s always been a great friend. Our families know each other. When he came back, I was excited. I know the kind of things he can do, the things he’s capable of. I’m just glad he was able to get a second chance, because you don’t get a lot of second chances, not in this league.”
Beasley is way past his second chance. That probably came with the Wolves, who acquired him from Miami in 2010 for two second-rounders. Then came the Suns, who signed him in 2012, and hoped he’d be a big piece of their future. Then came Miami again, sandwiching signings between a one-month stint in Memphis in 2014 that didn’t get out of training camp when Beasley got a more lucrative offer to play in Shanghai with the CBA’s Shanghai Sharks.
Beasley was, by all accounts, clean in Miami last year. But he still blew defensive assignments and lacked attention to detail, and the Heat didn’t make any effort to bring him back. So it was back to China — this time, to Shandong.
Fortunately for Beasley, the Golden Stars had NBA veteran Pooh Jeter, who’d been in Shandong for four years, on the roster.
“Just knowing everybody in the city, I just made sure Mike and I was taken care of, with the housing, with our food, with the chefs … they cook us whatever we need,” Jeter said by phone last week. ” … I made sure in our city that we’re good. Just doing our traveling through the season, knowing where all the best restaurants are. When Mike was in Shanghai last year, he didn’t go out or nothing. He didn’t know where to go. So, (it was) just me taking him under my wing, showing him China, really. And he loved it. Loved it.”
Beasley and Jeter worked out in Los Angeles last summer before the CBA season began, and were together almost every day in China.
“Pooh became my best friend,” Beasley said. “He can tell you more than anybody — I was just an emotional roller coaster. Once I signed, we spent maybe six weeks before the season together, then the whole preseason together, then every day. That’s literally. Whether we was mad, or happy, or whether he ignored me to the end of the world, we talked. He helped me get through a lot of my personal problems. I love Pooh. Pooh is one of my best friends. Family, really.”
Said Jeter: “we talked about life, from Jesus, to talking about love, to talking about our families, everything. I believed, I was really happy to be there for him in the moment of need. And he was there for me. That’s my brother now, really. This is really my brother, from being with him every single day and just enjoying the moment. I would tell him, just enjoy today. Who cares about tomorrow? Let’s just enjoy right now.”
Jeter had grown to love China — he turned down an offer from Tony Parker’s ASVEL team to play in France last year — and he thought Beasley could excel in Shandong.
“Even in the beginning, it was ‘dang, I’m back here,'” Jeter said of Beasley’s mindset. “It took some time … once he was comfortable, the season starts in November. And in the first game, he had 48 points. Then we would look at an NBA game, and he would get sad. But I think once December hit, he started being comfortable, and he just started being Mike.”
Later in November, Beasley scored 49 in a game. He scored 63 in the CBA All-Star Game in January, breaking the record 59 he’d scored the year before. At the end of the Chinese season in February, Beasley was named the CBA’s foreign MVP.
“Being it was my second year in China, I was ready for the physicality of the game,” Beasley said. “I was ready for the different tactics that they would use to try and stop us. It was fun, though. I played with a great guy in Pooh. My coaches was fun. The whole team was fun. They made it easy. They made it real easy for me.”
The Rockets have pretty good intel in China, obviously, with Yao Ming owning and running the Sharks, and more than a decade’s worth of relationships with coaches and management throughout the country. So as Houston’s season continued to carom out of control, the firing of Kevin McHale 11 games into the season having had next to no impact, the Rockets’ bench was in need of overhaul.
Even though Jeter has been in China the last few years (he played 62 games for the Kings in 2010-11), he keeps up with the NBA through his friendships and his shoe store in California, Laced — where Russell Westbrook recently came through. He believed that Beasley could excel back in the NBA.
“I knew, with rotation players from the NBA that come to China, they don’t come back,” Jeter said. “I knew with him, just preparing him, we had to stay ready for that moment, and when he got that call from Houston, it was go time. People look at it as a surprise, and I’m like, this ain’t no surprise. We worked out every chance we got, and in the games, it was basically practice, just him working on his game. So when he came to Houston and was scoring all them points and doing that, that’s not a surprise once you prepare for it.”
Other NBA teams, as well as the Israeli power Maccabi Tel Aviv, came after him. But Beasley only had eyes for an NBA reunion.
“For me, the (Israeli) season was just too long,” Beasley said. “I couldn’t be away from my kids, I couldn’t be away from home for 10 months at a time. I would have loved to have played for them. They won the championship not too long ago, they have NBA coaches (former Rockets and Raptors center Zan Tabak is head coach), they have a great program, amazing city and country. But like I said, my kids are too young for me to be away from them for so long.”
Beasley had gone through agents like changing socks over the years, but his latest representative is Excel’s Jeff Schwartz, one of the biggest and most powerful in the game — and an example of how desperate Beasley was to make this comeback stick. Schwartz not only got his client a deal with the Rockets last month, he got him a multi-year contract, giving Beasley an NBA home for next season.
“We’ve known Mike many years and he’s a good person,” Schwartz texted Monday morning. “He just needed to decide what was important to him. Last summer, Javon Phillips, an agent in my office, and I talked with him, and it became clear that he was taking ownership and responsibility for his career. Once he showed that it was an easy decision.”
The fit was immediate. Normally, coming to a team this late in the season dictates a limited role for the newcomer. But the Rockets didn’t bring Beasley over to defer. They needed him to be aggressive and shoot early and often. Even if it’s not a three.
“That’s another example of everybody just letting me play my game,” Beasley said. “James, J.B. (Bickerstaff, the interim coach), they put me in the right positions — really, my sweet spots, where I can be most effective. Really, I just came into it optimistically. I came into it with an open mind. I was just going to play hard and see what happened.”
Beasley has scored in double figures in 12 of his first 17 games for the Rockets, including 30 against the Hawks, 21 in a big win over the Raptors and 17 in a come-from-behind win at Cleveland. He helps both of the Rockets’ stars, Harden and Howard, in different ways — Harden by being a secondary ballhandler, with whom he’s already developed good chemistry (“we’re left-handed,” Beasley said. “I say that jokingly, but I also mean it. I understand his game, he understands mine”) and Howard by getting on the glass.
“Beas has been playing very well, scoring the basketball, just his energy,” Harden said. “We’ve kind of figured out playing off of him. When you’re talented, you can play anywhere.”
Houston is a game behind the Utah Jazz for the final playoff spot in the Western Conference with two games to go. It’s not a position the Rockets expected or wanted. But they have no one to blame for their current lot but themselves. Beasley probably understands that feeling better than anyone. One last time, his talent is giving him a chance.
“I don’t want to be cocky or overconfident,” Beasley said. “But everybody has a niche. That’s my niche. I can put the ball in the bucket.”
… AND NOBODY ASKED YOU, EITHER
Revisionist Hinkiery. From Sean Biggins:
What are the chances that in three or four years the Sixers are contenders and we have to look back and give Sam Hinkie credit and acknowledge that ownership just didn’t give it enough time to play out?
I must admit, Sean, I’ve gone back and forth on what I wanted to say about the two-plus years that Hinkie ran the 76ers — a stint which ended with his sudden resignation on Wednesday. I neither blindly trusted “the Process” (Hinkie’s shorthand for the perpetual roster and Draft pick churn in which he engaged, and his supporters championed) nor thought Hinkie was in over his head, a charlatan and know-nothing dilettante.
Hinkie is, as they supposedly say in Boston, wicked smart. He never lied to anyone about what he was planning on doing once empowered by Sixers ownership — he was going to buy low, and lower, and lower, caring little about chemistry or communication until he could put two or three difference-making talents on the roster. And while no one knows if Joel Embiid or Dario Saric is that kind of player, at least the 76ers will get to find out, starting next season — in addition to having as many as three Lottery picks, along with massive cap room. That it will be Bryan and Jerry Colangelo who will likely be the beneficiaries of all the groundwork Hinkie lay is unfair. (So is poverty. The latter is much more permanent.) Fans in Philly received no discounts for the tickets they bought for a sub-NBA product the last three seasons. It was high time they got more for what they were paying. Winning matters. Fans will tolerate a team that’s losing as long as they think they’re trying to win. When it’s obvious that doesn’t matter, even in the short term, it’s hard to get anyone to buy in.
Hinkie will work again, whether in charge of the day to day building of a roster or in a senior management role. (It is hard to believe he’ll ever commit his thoughts to anyone in such a manner again as in the 13-page manifesto he sent Sixers ownership in announcing his resignation — which was leaked in five seconds or so to ESPN. Hinkie could not possibly believe that wasn’t going to happen.) And the 76ers will finally return to the NBA Living under the capable management of Bryan Colangelo, a two-time Executive of the Year.
Not the Point I’d Like to Make. From Vincent Chau:
Recently I read about your comment on Mark Cuban’s suggestion on promoting the mid-range game by extending the 3-point line. My understanding for the English language is not strong enough to decipher whether you were being sarcastic or not. However, in my opinion, what Mr. Cuban suggested was just a knee-jerk reaction to what the league, and in particular what Golden States have been doing the last couple of years with tremendous success, and I seriously doubt that he would have said the same thing if Dirk Nowitzki was still in his prime, or Chandler Parsons could hit the 3s like the Splash Brothers.
If you really want to promote the mid-range game, I have an alternative solution for you. Just change the rule and make any close range (restricted area) basket a one-point basket. The reason the 3s have flourished relative to the mid-to-long-2s has been purely mathematical, with the two-pointers having similar probabilities of going in (around 40 percent), the 3s have a higher expected resulting point per shot (1.2 for the 3s vs 0.8 for the long 2s). Mr. Cuban’s idea was to try to shorten the gap by lowering the probability of the 3-point shot. My idea is that if the restricted-area basket became a 1-pointer, which lowers its expected point per shot to around 0.5 for the 50 percent shot, then the mid-to-long 2s would become much more valuable, at the expense of all the physical low post players.
I love the game as it is, with all the exciting around-the-rim finishes and thrilling 3s, and I would be very sad if either of the above suggestions became a reality. I would love to hear your thoughts and comments on this.
Well, that is an alternative, Vincent. I don’t agree with it, though. Adopting that rule would basically eliminate all post play in the game — and by extension, most big men. If you think teams are downsizing now, what do you think would happen when any shot in the paint was only worth a point? There would be even more three-pointers taken than there are now; how could you not try for three times as many points as you’d get for a layup? You’d basically have the old International Basketball Association, which was for players only 6-foot-4 and under. (It didn’t last.)
Is there no one to even challenge me? From Leo San Pedro:
I have no Twitter and I couldn’t find your FB page (I didn’t really looked for it), but you called it:
The Celtics did wind up beating GSW in their home court. You must have a crystal ball or something.
Thank you for noticing that I’m a savant when it comes to picking upsets, Leo.
Love, you Denver! City by the Bay! From Lavardo Braynen:
Buddy Hield is from Eight Mile Rock, Bahamas not Eight Mile Rock, Jamaica.
Thank you for noticing that I’m still a moron when it comes to geography, Lavardo.
Send your questions, comments, criticisms and cups of sugar for when the neighbors run low and come a-knockin’ to daldridgetnt@gmail.com. If your e-mail is sufficiently funny, thought-provoking, well-written or snarky, we just might publish it!
MVP WATCH
(last week’s averages in parentheses)
1) Stephen Curry (25.5 ppg, 6.3 rpg, 9.3 apg, .432 FG, 1.000 FT): After making four 3-pointers in San Antonio Sunday night, Curry has 392 made 3-pointers this season with one game remaining, at home Wednesday against Memphis. Curry has made eight 3-pointers in a game — which would give him 400 (!) this season — 15 times this year. Just sayin’.
2) Kawhi Leonard (20.3 ppg, 8 rpg, 2.3 apg, .417 FG, .792 FT): Has more than lived up to the max deal and the faith the organization has shown in him. Solid, solid guy.
3) Russell Westbrook (18.5 ppg, 9.5 rpg, 11 apg, .458 FG, .800 FT): Good to know that even with Russ, there are some limits to his sartorial choices.
4) LeBron James (25 ppg, 6 rpg, 6 apg, .769 FG, .833 FT): I’m not sure how anyone would confuse James with Dwyane Wade, but there you go.
5) Kevin Durant (28.5 ppg, 5.5 rpg, 8 apg, .442 FG, .923): Former teammate Kendrick Perkins says he has talked with Durant about potential teams he (Durant) will visit when he becomes a free agent this summer, joking — supposedly — that Durant had him sign a confidentiality agreement to keep quiet.
I’M FEELIN’….
1) A Hall of Fame class led by Allen Iverson and Shaquille O’Neal is one that’s going to be must-see TV on NBA TV in September. Congrats to the Answer, the Diesel, Yao Ming, Sheryl Swoopes, Tom Izzo, John McClendon, Darell Garretson, Zelmo Beaty, Jerry Reinsdorf and Cumberland Posey for their selections to the Hall.
2) The Timberwolves are finishing the season the way they started, with meaningful road wins — including at Golden State and at Portland. It’s just those 60-70 games in the middle that Minnesota has to work on next year.
3) Looking forward to seeing Kobe’s last home game Wednesday. Wherever you fall on the Bryant spectrum — love him, hate him, somewhere in between — he’s been one of the greatest players and winners in league history. Respect must, and should, be paid, and I’m sure the crowd at Staples Center will oblige.
4) You can’t execute a last-second play better than Villanova did against North Carolina. And the Wildcats won’t have a moment that’s more meaningful. Congrats to them on their national championship — which will stand alongside the one they got in 1985 over mighty Georgetown.
NOT FEELIN’ …
1) The last thing Jerry Sloan would want is for anyone to feel sorry for him, because self-pity was one of the things he couldn’t stand in a player. So we won’t feel sorry for him, even after his disclosure last week that he is suffering from a form of Parkinson’s Disease, along with Lewy Body Dementia. But he will remain in my thoughts and prayers, because he was one of the most honest and real guys I’ve ever dealt with. He was a no-nonsense coach who accepted no excuses from his Jazz players for more than two decades.
2) If Phil Jackson is serious about giving Kurt Rambis a long-term deal instead of scanning the whole landscape of potential head coaches, then the Knicks have to get serious about trying to trade Carmelo Anthony this summer.
3) Many congrats to Danny Willett for his improbable Masters championship, built with his own great golf — with a seemingly impossible collapse by Jordan Spieth. The back nine on Sunday at Augusta remains riveting. But I, curmudgeon, still missed watching Tiger Woods, and hope he can return to play meaningful golf again someday.
4) As the presidential primary season continues, and I am inundated by tweets from supporters and haters from all over the political spectrum, some friendly reminders: a) Your candidate is not perfect, nor without fault; b) your candidate’s opponent(s) is/are not the devil incarnate, and c) self-righteousness is not becoming in a surrogate. Thanks.
BY THE NUMBERS
1,388 — Career games Tim Duncan has played with the Spurs, one short of tying Reggie Miller for second place on the league’s all-time list of games played by a player with one team. Duncan and Miller trail Utah’s Hall of Famer, John Stockton, who played all 1,504 of his career games with the Jazz.
1,343 — Games that Kobe Bryant played before scoring 35 points in 27 minutes or less, as he did for the first time in his career Sunday against the Rockets.
1,184 — Total games, including playoffs, that the Kings played in 28 years at Sleep Train Arena (nee ARCO Arena) in Sacramento. The Kings played their last game at Sleep Train Saturday, getting a last-second win over the Thunder. They move into the Golden1 Center downtown next season. Sleep Train was an old barn, but the fans made it into one of the league’s best and loudest buildings with their full-throated, cowbell-enhanced din. It will be missed.
MORE MORNING TIP: DA’s Top 15 Rankings | Q&A with Andre Drummond
Longtime NBA reporter and columnist David Aldridge is an analyst for TNT. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter.
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