Michael Beasley's best games as a pro

There are some NBA players whose names you just never want to see trending on Twitter or mentioned in a newswire headline. If disgraced forward Michael Beasley's name isn't at the very top of that list, it's certainly on the first page. No news is good news with B-Easy, and just about all news is pretty damn bad. 

This summer, Beasley's name has made the rounds for two separate, predictably ignominious reasons: First in early August for getting busted with pot in Scotsdale, AZ (far from Michael's first such run in with the law), and then earlier this week for getting bought out by the Phoenix Suns, still with two years and at least $9 million remaining on his contract. If Beasley makes any more headlines this summer, he might not even make it to the fall. 

At this point in his career, it's safe to describe Michael Beasley as a draft bust. Except that term wouldn't be totally accurate, at least not in the conventional sense. Most draft busts struggle at the start of their careers, improve a little over the next few seasons (far more gradually than fans and management would prefer), but plateau way earlier and at a way lower ceiling than initially expected. 

Beasley's career arc doesn't really follow that path: Rather, he started off fairly competently - his rookie numbers are better than you remember, even if they seemed pretty underwhelming at the time - and just got worse from there. Plotting a graph of his stats from season to season would basically result in a sloped line heading downward - his PER, FG% and Offensive Rating all peaked in his rookie season and have declined every year since. 

Beasley is like the NBA's equivalent of '00s band Interpol - both arrived with unbelievable promise (Beasley averaged 26 and 12 his one season at Kansas State, Interpol's advance EP featured a couple of the best indie rock songs of the decade), had a pretty good if slightly disappointing full-length debut, continued to have solid moments in every season/album after that (but increasingly fewer as time wore on), and eventually slid into total irrelevance. Calling him a bust only really tells half the story - and hey, at least he had some moments (and "Obstacle 1" and "Evil" were some quality songs, no?). 

Anyway, since we might not get much of a chance to talk about Michael Beasley again until he accidentally burns his house down or Kendrick Lamar dis-references him in a freestyle, I figured this would be a good time to remember a handful of those moments. 

The first comes during Beasley's second season on the Miami Heat, after enduring a rookie season that never really seemed to get going. As previously mentioned, his stats for that season were actually OK--14 points a game on 47% shooting (40% from deep), a solidly above-average 17.2 PER, first team All-Rookie honors--but that Heat team was stuck in a weird place; too good to tank (with Dwyane Wade in a career season), too old to rebuild (the team's second-best player by season's end was an already-decrepit Jermaine O'Neal), and too talent-poor to contend (Daequan Cook, Chris Quinn and rookie Mario Chalmers all featured prominently). 

There was no place for Beasley on that team, and it showed - he couldn't find a consistent position or role on the roster, and neither Wade nor coach Eric Spoelstra ever seemed to really trust him to any degree. B-Easy's true breakout game would have to wait for his sophomore season, in a February showdown against the Memphis Grizzlies.

The opportunity was there for Beasley because the game before in New Jersey, Wade had exited with a strained calf in the first quarter. Beasley had risen to the occasion then as well, scoring 23 on 10-17 shooting and leading the Heat to a 87-84 victory over the awful Nets. But the win against the Grizzlies in Memphis was far more impressive. I was watching that game on TV as a recent boarder of the Grizzlies' bandwagon--they wouldn't really be good until the next season, but the team's core identity was starting to congeal around Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol, and they were already fun to watch--and I absolutely couldn't believe how many big shots Beasley hit in that game, staving off what should have been an easy win for the up-and-coming Grizz, and stealing a 100-87 victory for the Heat in double OT.

Beasley ended the game with a career-high 30 points, and I would've sworn at the time that it was the coming out party for one of the next great NBA scorers. Afterwards, Wade and Spoelstra seemed a little bit surprised by the outburst, Coach Spo joking to reporters that he'd show his second-year player footage of his outing before the team's next game against Dallas, presumably so he wouldn't forget that he could do that and revert to his old, oddly passive self again. Evidently it didn't take, since Beasley would go 3-11 for 12 points in Big D, then shot a combined 10-36 over the next three games (all Heat losses). By the end of the streak, Wade was back and healthy and ready to re-take charge anyway. The Heat lost to the Celtics in five games in the playoffs, and Beasley never again scored 30 points in a Miami uniform. 

In the off-season, Beasley was jettisoned to Minnesota in Miami's Great Cap Cleansing of '10. For a guy who was the #2 overall pick just two summers before, believed by some to be a safer pick than #1 overall selection (and eventual league MVP) Derrick Rose, his unloading was pretty unceremonious. All Miami got in return for Beasley was a couple second round picks and a lighter cap sheet. Few tears were shed in Miami for B-Easy, however, and within a few seconds of The Decision, most Heat fans likely forgot he had ever existed in the first place. 

In Minnesota, Beasley seemed to find a new lease on life - the time-honored "change of scenery" hope writ large - and the Wolves looked like they might have pulled off the heist of the off-season. Mike's numbers from November and December of that season were pretty ridiculous, and virtually identical to one another--23 and 6 on 48% shooting, 42% from deep. He didn't pass much (2.2 assists a game over the time span), he didn't defend much (though then again, no one on the Wolves did that season) and he certainly didn't win much (Minny was 8-25 through the end of December), but he seemed well on his way to being a Carmelo Anthony-type first-option volume scorer, the kind of guy you can build an offense around if you know what you're doing. 

The league was really put on notice that Beasley had arrived that year during an anti-marquee matchup between the Kings and Wolves in early November, in which Beasley exploded for 42 points and nine rebounds in a 98-89 win, going stretches where it seemed like he absolutely could not miss from the field.

For his follow-up act, Beasley would hang 35 on the Knicks in a nine-point win--the last time the Wovles would win back-to-back games for a month-and-a-half--though his repeat performance was overshadowed by teammate Kevin Love's 31-point, 31-rebound night, the first 30/30 game in the NBA since Moses Malone. Nonetheless, Beasley certainly had the best quote of the night, when asked post-game about his recent scoring breakout: "I'm a monster and every day is halloween." (Al Jourgensen no doubt approved.) 

Beasley had one more truly great game as a Timberwolf, a home outing against the Clippers a week after the 42-point outing against the Kings. This time, B-Easy went off for just 33, but that 33 included the game-winning jumper with just two seconds to go. 

I was actually at this game, for part of my 30 NBA Arenas in 60 Days project, and the thing I'll always remember most isn't that shot, or the fact that I had total confidence he was gonna hit it, but rather a moment a couple plays earlier, where after hitting his first big jumper of the night, Beasley retreated on defense while clapping along to the "EVER-Y-BO-DY-CLAP-YO-HANDS!!" audience cue. I'm not sure there was a single other player in the NBA who would have been feeling himself so much at that particular moment to be devoid enough of all self-consciousness to do that. It was pretty infectious. 

Discussing the Wolves' hero after that game, I wrote "Hope the good times last for the guy, I really do." They didn't. Beasley's scoring and shooting numbers would drop over the course of the year - for such a talented scorer, he never found a way to be smart with his scoring, and even most of his best games involve him taking a ton of questionable shots - and the team somehow got even worse as the season went on, dropping their last 15 games of the season. 

The next season, Beasley failed to rediscover his groove and was jerked from the starting lineup eight games into the season, with only a couple exceptional outbursts against the Rockets and Clippers providing highlights in an otherwise fairly lost season. He parted ways with the Wolves in the summer, moving on to the second fresh start of his career in Phoenix.

It was quickly obvious last year that a bottoming-out Phoenix would not be the place for Beasley to again revive his career. The team was an across-the-board mess, and Beasley seemed to have little interest in fitting in as anything but a freelancer. He finished the season totaling more field goal attempts (766) than points (759). It was a truly staggering feat of inefficient scoring, one that spoke to Beasley's laziness with regards to jacking long twos (28% of his shots were from 16-23 feet, and he hit on just 35% of 'em) and failing to draw free throws (just 126 all season, less than a quarter of Carmelo Anthony's year-long total). 

Still, even that last year in Phoenix, Beasley could still turn it on for a game. His most memorable outing for the season came on arguably the biggest night of the year for the Suns. It was the Lakers' first visit to US Airways, a homecoming for the recently traded Steve Nash. Beasley stole the show on Nash's big night, scoring 27 points and sinking the go-ahead basket with 43 seconds to go, an impressive layup in which he switched hands mid-jump. The Suns beat the Lakers 92-86 in a game LA absolutely had to have, and afterwards Beasley proclaimed that he was "trying to turn over a new leaf. No more nonchalant Beas. I'm back to the Beast."

I don't doubt that another team will pick up Beasley in an attempt to re-unleash the Beast (for what would have to be something like the 13th time already), and in fact, I'm still betting that it's going to be those Lakers, who remain so desperate for wing help next year. But I'd be surprised if these memorable games didn't just continue to get rarer and rarer, until you get to that fourth Interpol album and none of the song titles even jog your memory in the slightest. 

"Barricade"? That was the lead single? 

I harken back to a quote of Mike's after his final playoff elimination with the Heat--he hasn't sniffed the postseason since, and very well might not get the chance to again--where he attempted to divest himself of all hopes or expectations anyone may have had for him, draft slot be damned: 

Don't expect nothing from me, and you'll be happy after every game. I'm tired of expectations. I was supposed to be this. I was supposed to be that. I'm going to play basketball and be who I be.

That's Michael Beasley's five years in the NBA, just playing basketball and being who he be. And now, that's finally us as well - completely and thoroughly devoid of expectation.