Patrick Beverley humiliated Chris Paul after Phoenix Suns’ 2022 Playoffs exit, and Matt Barnes did not appreciate his way.
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The go-to thing for an NBA player after retiring from the league is getting into sports media. Not only it pays their bills, but it also lets them live the life they are used to – life in front of a camera.
Obviously, there’s a lot of difference between those two lives but when you play the game and hear your praises and criticism by the media, and then retire and do the same to the others, it’s like life coming full circle.
Players these days don’t even wait until retirement to become an analyst, Draymond Green and CJ McCollum are prime examples who work part-time for TNT and ESPN respectively.
Also read: “I think Phoenix Suns’ Window Closed!”: Paul Pierce Drops a Massive Truth Bomb on Chris Paul and Co
But it was Patrick Beverley who came in for a couple of weeks during the Playoffs after his Timberwolves got knocked out, and created an eventful atmosphere while he was there. CP3 was at the centre of attraction of that atmosphere.
Matt Barnes thinks highly of Patrick Beverley as a player but not so much as a media member mostly because of Chris Paul
Green is leading the charge towards “new media”, where he wants the media fraternity to be away from the clickbait, which the likes of Skip Bayless and Steven A. Smith thrive upon.
But when the Phoenix Suns crashed out of the 2022 Playoffs at the hands of Luka Doncic’s Dallas Mavericks, his fellow NBA player went off on Chris Paul very much like Skip goes after LeBron James – with a personal agenda.
It clearly looked like Pat Bev had an agenda. And what would that be, you ask? There can be multiple reasons, Matt Barnes thinks it is Beverley’s college camp grudge.
In a recent appearance on the podcast Club Shay Shay, Barnes opened up about how big of a fan he is of the Lakers’ new addition’s game but also made it abundantly clear that he doesn’t like the way he is going about his media career.
Pat Bev and CP3 go back to Lakers G’s college days
Beverley didn’t hesitate to drop missiles on the Point God of the NBA when he failed to seal the deal for the Suns in Game 7 of the Western Conference Semi-finals.
The 12x All-Star couldn’t contribute more than 10 points in the Final game of the series which wouldn’t be either his first Playoff meltdown in that series or his terrifically long and successful career.
Beverley wasn’t wrong in calling him out for it, but the way he did it was a bit derogatory for a legend of the game. Its root goes a long way back to the training camp which LeBron James and CP3 came to in 2008, and Beverley was in Arkansas and attending the camp.
Maybe Beverley’s grudge comes from the fact that CP3 built a legendary career getting all the opportunities and contracts he got since coming into the league in 2005, while he had to work a lot harder to earn even $10-13 million contracts every year.
Now that is on Beverley to not develop his game like a typical point guard. On his day he might be a better asset than CP in a Playoff game, but their legacy in the game could never be compared.
