In this season of inertia, Patrick Beverley continues to press, to sprint, to attack. The Houston Rockets sink even as he keeps trying to bail the water and save the ship. They lose the games they used to win, and you wonder how much more can he do to make this season right?
Beverley stands out as one of the NBA’s most aggressive on-ball defenders, even as he watches his team continue to express indifference defensively. He is charged with guarding the league’s most explosive point guards and, at the other end, he plays off the ball while where possessions are dominated by James Harden.
He has responded to that assignment by elevating his 3-point shooting to a career-best 40.7 percent.
“I worked my tail off in the summertime to bring more to the table than defense this year,” he says. “Tried to play off the catch, watched a lot of film, worked on my jump shots, stuff like that.”
To what good? Thursday night on TNT, in what amounted to an early playoff setting, Beverley nailed in smooth transition 3-pointer that drew his Rockets within one possession of the visiting Bulls with 17.5 seconds left. That shot left him with a career-best 22 points. But by then, per recent habit, his team was already underwater.
The Rockets’ nine-point lead to begin the fourth quarter was giving way to a 103-100 loss that left them a half-game behind the Dallas Mavericks and Utah Jazz for the Western Conference’s final playoff spots.
“Every team that we play, people are like, ‘Man, what’s going on with you guys? You guys have so much talent,’ ” Beverley was saying recently. “People know that we’re dangerous. It’s up to us to make noise when it’s time to make noise in the playoffs.”
The problems in Houston have been easy to point out and hard to fix. The 56-win Rockets of 2014-15 were 6th in defensive efficiency, but are No. 22 today with days remaining in a season that threatens to end prematurely. For Beverley, the 27-year-old late-bloomer who is finishing his fourth season, the goal is to find ways to influence his team constructively. Such is his new point of view.
“My mom tells me this a lot: My approach is very different from a lot of people,” Beverley says. “I don’t have a subtle approach. The only thing I know is whatever it takes to get it done. Let’s get it done by any means necessary. My approach is kind of loud and really aggressive.”
‘You have to know your teammates’
He has been learning how to adapt to the needs of others.
“Understanding the league, everybody is different,” Beverley said. “The way I talk to JET [Jason Terry] or the way I talk to Trevor Ariza won’t be the same way I talk to Dwight [Howard] or one of the rookies or, you know, anybody else of that nature. Being a point guard in this league, you have to balance out people — the emotions and stuff like that. I’m starting to find that out, man. It’s not easy, but it’s definitely a work in progress.”
“That’s another area of growth for him is in the leadership department,” says Terry. “Doing it vocally but doing it constructive, so it doesn’t turn into an argument, but it turns into, ‘OK, I got you next time.’ And that’s something you have to gauge, you have to know your teammates. Each guy has to be approached different. That’s the thing he’s learning now.”
As Beverley looks back on his unusual career, he recognizes that his best qualities — which resulted in a four-year, $25 million contract to keep him in Houston last summer — are also the source of the problems that prevented him from making the NBA sooner.
“The Bulls, the Cleveland Cavaliers I know for sure, the Miami Heat — they didn’t know how I’d be in the locker room,” Beverley says. “Because my way of basketball is different. I’m more of a go-out-there-and-get-it-done-by-any-means type of guy that don’t care what name is on the back of the jersey or what name is on the front of the jersey. I’m here to put my team in a position to win basketball games. That’s all. In Minnesota, I probably rubbed people the wrong way.”
With all of those teams he had tryouts that did not lead to full-time work. Beverley, a high school star in Chicago, had left Arkansas after two highly-productive seasons when he was caught cheating on an exam. He spent his first three years professionally in Ukraine, Greece and Russia, wondering all the while if he would ever make it back home.
“Early in my career, I didn’t know how to handle it well,” he says of the aggressive personality that defines his game. “I was mean on the court, I was mean off the court. It affected my daily routine. I wasn’t as mature as I am now.”
Beverley’s style was branded at the end of his rookie year in Houston by his collision with Oklahoma City’s Russell Westbrook in Game 2 of the Rockets-Thunder first-round series in 2013.
The play resulted in a season-ending knee injury for Westbrook, who Beverley ran into while Westbrook was trying to call for a timeout. It was a play that few NBA defenders would have contested, and Beverley was there to make it because Rockets GM Daryl Morey, who has accommodated a diverse blend of personalities, recognized a need for his edgy defense.
“They embraced me and embraced my culture,” Beverley says. “From that, we’ve kind of strived to start to create that culture with the Houston Rockets. That gritty, hard-work-pays-off type of culture.”
The culture has gone sideways this year. Amid the Rockets’ new routine of stopping the ball on offense while giving up drives and dunks, the easy response from Beverley would be to go at his teammates with the same UFC aggression that he applies to opposing point guards. “Because of his competitiveness, because of how he approaches the game, that language barrier was hard,” Terry said.
“Communication is the key. There’s several different ways to communicate, and obviously each guy is different. He has to learn, some guys like to be pounded on and beat to death, while other guys like to be stroked and talked to in a monotone and get your message across.”
Terry refers to a well-known incident last month against the New Orleans Pelicans when Howard and Beverley — who would hit the game-winning 3 in the final minute – argued throughout a timeout. Interim coach J.B. Bickerstaff benched both players as their chat continued into the third quarter.
“There was a miscommunication on a pick and roll coverage,” Terry says. “It carried on for about five minutes, he and Dwight were going back and forth, back and forth, even while the timeout was going on. And so I pulled him aside and said, ‘With a big fella you want to take him to the side. You don’t want to call him out in front of his teammates. He doesn’t respond to that very well.’
“So the next game, very same situation happens. He waited until the timeout and talked to him over here while everything else was going on. He came back out, and I could see the smile on his face. He kind of looked at me like, yeah, I got it. It’s those kind of things that have helped him out in his development.”
Patience required for Beverley’s new task
From this perspective it becomes easier to understand why the Rockets’ experiment with Ty Lawson was a failure. As competitive as Beverley is, for as long as he struggled to reach the NBA and as hard as he is trying now to grow as a shooter and a teammate, was he going to stand by and enable Lawson to take his job? By March 1, Lawson was bought out — not that his absence has changed anything. The Rockets have gone .500 without him.
Whether they make the playoffs or not, the Rockets must make firm decisions on where they’ve gone wrong and who can help re-establish their hunger defensively. Isn’t Beverley a go-to player in that regard?
“He’s very emotional, he plays with a lot of fire,” says Rockets swingman Corey Brewer. “Sometimes that emotion can affect the ways you speak to your teammates. You want him to keep the fire. You want him to be aggressive. You want him to still be Pat. That’s what I think he’s been doing, but he’s been becoming a better communicator.”
“He’s learning the game of how to play on the court, and his communication has gotten better as well,” says Harden of Beverley. “He still has a long way to go, but he’s in the right direction. He’s learning.”
The question, as Beverley progresses, is whether he can teach as well as learn. Can he re-enlist his fellow Rockets — if not right now, then next season — to follow his example by expressing their ambitions at the defensive end? During a brief preseason stay with the Heat in 2010, when he was the final cut, Beverley says he watched how LeBron James and Dwyane Wade balanced relationships with teammates vs. their all-out desire to prevail.
“Those two guys are great off the court, but when the game’s on the line? They’re animals,” says Beverley. “They’re dogs that are trying to do anything it takes to win.
“How would I lead people? Positive or negative?” Beverley says of the question he has been asking for most of his adult of life. “It wasn’t easy. I come from very humble beginnings. It requires a lifestyle change. Me accepting that lifestyle change — eating right, living right, trying to start a family. Now I’m able to be that pit bull on the court, but also be that cool teammate you can walk up to and get a laugh from off the court.”
There have not been so many laughs immediately after the games this season. Creating those moments has to be, as Beverley continues his development, the next urgent goal.
Ian Thomsen has covered the NBA since 2000. You can e-mail him here or follow him on Twitter.
The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA, its clubs or Turner Broadcasting.
