My new favorite player.
April 14, 2014
The X Factor
The Patrick Beverley Experience is pure hell for every opponent, from weekend warriors to NBA stars. Relentlessly disruptive and unapologetically combative, the well-traveled point guard gives the Rockets their edge and—health permitting—can't wait to irritate in the postseason
Lee Jenkins
WEDGED BETWEEN the Toyota Center and the Salvation Army in downtown Houston is a sunken basketball court shielded by a canopy of live oaks. The court was built in 2005 as part of a renovation to Root Memorial Square Park, and the Rockets led the fund-raising. They recognized an opportunity to connect the millionaires on one side of La Branch Street with the grinders on the other. The bridge was symbolic, of course, because pros are ensconced in practice facilities with hardwood floors. They can't very well take elbows to the teeth from Joe Playground. But on the second week of January the boys at Root noticed a familiar figure crossing La Branch. He wasn't much taller than 6 feet or heavier than 180 pounds. His hair was unkempt and his face unshaven. "Who got next?" Rockets point guard Patrick Beverley hollered, peeling off his T-shirt. "I'm skins."
Beverley was technically still recovering from a broken right hand, but trainers had just cleared him to practice, and the team was in New Orleans. It had been three weeks since he stuck his face in someone's jersey. He missed the taste. The boys were giddy, already imagining what they'd tell their buddies. Then the ball was inbounded and full-court fury unleashed. "I gave them what I give everybody," Beverley says. "The whole 94." Hand checks and arm slaps, overplays and undercuts, a violation of space and erosion of will set to a sound track more grating than any arena organ: Let's go, Pat! Come on, Pat! Good foul, Pat! Be aggressive, Pat! The boys enjoyed the Patrick Beverley Experience—"a mental and physical wear-down," as Houston assistant coach J.B. Bickerstaff describes it, "a complete and total package of disruption"—no more than Russell Westbrook and Chris Paul do.
"Basketball players want to be comfortable, they want to be lackadaisical, they want to make the right passes and take the right shots," Beverley says. "No. When you play me, I'm going to get right up in your grill and let you know it's going to be a long day. It's going to be physical. It's going to be something you don't like. It's going to be hell." Beverley is compared to a gnat and a mosquito, a pit bull and a Doberman pinscher, and that's just by family and friends. "He's obnoxious," says Rockets forward Chandler Parsons, "which is why we love him so much." He is a one-man rebuttal to every preening floor general, pounding the ball and ordering up screens. He stands out from the NBA's cotillion club like one of his Adidas warmups amid the tailored suits. "This is a position where a lot of Western Conference teams have All-Stars," says Houston general manager Daryl Morey. The Rockets found the next best option, somebody who drives the All-Stars apoplectic.
Beverley has scrapped with Westbrook and Paul. He was punched by Kings center DeMarcus Cousins, pushed by Grizzlies 7-footer Marc Gasol and trashed by Trail Blazers point guard Damian Lillard. "I'm just not going to let somebody be all in my chest," Lillard moaned, "doing all this extra stuff." Beverley empathizes with Lillard. He'd be irritated, too, getting picked up full court, spun around three times and jostled for 12 seconds before he can run a play. "I hate being pressured," Beverley says. "I hate when someone gets in my personal area. That's why I do it to everybody else. If I had to play myself, I'd probably want to fight me too."
His tactics are as effective as they are annoying and the same for every occasion. He stripped the Pelicans' Jrue Holiday four times in three minutes of a preseason game. He hounded the 76ers' Michael Carter-Williams into nine turnovers in a summer league game. "Like a piranha on a pork chop," crows Kelvin Sampson, who left the Rockets' staff last Thursday to become the University of Houston coach. Paul is shooting 46.3% this season but only 38.5% against Beverley. Lillard is shooting 42.5% and 25.0% against Beverley. "He's not well liked around the league," says Timberwolves forward Kevin Love. "A lot of guys think, Damn, I've got to go against him tonight."
Love is pals with Westbrook, who has undergone three operations on his right knee since last April, when he pulled up to call timeout in a first-round playoff game between the Rockets and the Thunder. Beverley slid in front of him, trying for the steal, and Westbrook fell awkwardly. He tore his lateral meniscus, and Beverley waded through death threats on his Facebook account. When they met again this season, and Westbrook pulled up to call another timeout, Beverley attempted the exact same move. "The perception, I know, is that he's dirty," Love says. "I don't think he's dirty. I just think he plays really, really hard." Beverley also tore the meniscus in his right knee, on March 27, prompting cries of "karma" from Oklahoma City. But Beverley avoided surgery, and he plans to return for the playoffs. Even if his mobility is slightly limited, the Rockets need him. Without Beverley and center Dwight Howard, who is grappling with a sore left ankle, Houston had gone 2--3 at week's end but kept its grip on the fourth seed in the West. Chances are the Rockets will draw Portland in the first round, which means a grudge match with Lillard.
Beverley is not trying to make enemies any more than he's trying to make friends. "I don't talk to NBA players," he says. "I don't hang around a certain NBA group. I don't want to seem like an a-hole, but if you're not on my team, I'm not going to talk to you." Take, for instance, Warriors guard Stephen Curry. "We were roommates at LeBron James's camp and Paul Pierce's camp when we were kids," continues Beverley, 25. "We played on Team USA together. We have the same trainer. I love him to death. Where he works out in the off-season is where I work out. But when I heard he was coming to town this summer, I had to leave, and I couldn't come back until he was gone. I couldn't hang out with him. I don't want anyone to get comfortable around me." He pauses. "I don't want to get comfortable, either."
IN 2005, Arthur Agee returned to Marshall High in Chicago and filmed a sequel to Hoop Dreams, starring another wiry point guard who reminded Agee of himself. Beverley grew up in a West Chicago neighborhood called K-Town, playing one-on-one at Kedvale Park, where gang members bet his games and flipped him pocket money when he won. Defense is often an afterthought on the playground, but not in K-Town, where Beverley once went one-on-one at a basket with no rim. He was content to spar for the ball. "You could tell by the release if it was going in," he explains.
One of Beverley's childhood playmates was Shatoya Currie, who at nine years old became nationally known as Girl X after she was kidnapped, raped and poisoned at the notorious Cabrini-Green Homes. "People don't believe this," Beverley says, "but until sixth grade I'd never seen a white person who wasn't with the police or on TV." He was raised by a devoted single mother, Lisa Beverley, who gave manicures at Bottom Nail Salon. He called her boyfriend Dad. "He raised me too, but he was one of the well-known, big-time gang members in Chicago," says Beverley, who once saw Dad's gun fall out of his pants while playing hoops. "When I was in junior high, he got shot 15 times and died."
Worried that gangs would also ensnare her son, Lisa moved Patrick to the suburb of Aurora, enrolling him at Waubonsie Valley High. "Kids drove cars," Beverley says. "They left campus for lunch. They had football teams and baseball teams. I couldn't adjust." After a year and a half at Waubonsie he transferred to Marshall High and joined Mean Streets Express, the AAU program featuring Derrick Rose. But Beverley quit AAU, complaining that tournaments felt like meat markets, and found exposure elsewhere. Agee's 2007 movie, Hoop Reality, follows him through his senior season, when he led the state in scoring with 37.3 points per game, to go with 8.0 steals, 6.0 assists and 6.0 rebounds. He was the prep version of the NBA's do-everything point guard. In one halftime scene coach Lamont Bryant tells Beverley, "I don't care if you do a dance move, a spin move or you make up a move. You start putting that ball in the mother------- basket."