The rebirth of Michael Beasley
Miami is helping a once-troubled star realize his long-recognized potential
Updated: December 5, 2013, 12:37 PM ET
By
Tom Haberstroh | ESPN Insider
Kevin Durant.
Kevin Love.
Anthony Davis.
LaMarcus Aldridge.
Blake Griffin.
Brook Lopez.
DeMarcus Cousins.
Carmelo Anthony.
What do these eight players have in common? Each of them have played more than 200 minutes this season and average at least 20 points and seven rebounds on a per-36-minute basis. That represents a sample of the game's biggest star big men, and they're getting paid like it. The average salary of those franchise players? About $14 million. If we take out Cousins and Davis, who are still on their salary-depressed rookie scale contracts, that average price tag soars to $16.6 million.
Star players, star salaries. Ah, but there's one more player who's putting up those types of numbers, averaging 23.1 points and 7.9 rebounds per 36 minutes. That's
Michael Beasley.
Guess how much the
Miami Heat are paying him to play this season. $1 million. That's the bare minimum for a sixth-year player. While everyone turned a blind eye to Beasley this summer once he was waived by the
Phoenix Suns, the capped-out, two-time defending champs signed him for almost nothing. So far he has posted a 22.0
player efficiency rating in 2013-14, the sixth-highest in the Eastern Conference. It appears the rich only got richer.
Welcome to the reconstruction of Michael Beasley.
Old role, new role model
The 24-year-old is entering his prime, five years removed from being selected No. 2 overall behind
Derrick Rose in the 2008 draft. And in a bizarre twist of fate, it is Beasley, not Rose, who has a chance to contribute to a title run this season. The outrageous talent always has been there for Beasley, but the results? Not so much. In recent years, Beasley toiled away as an inefficient shot creator on the wing for Minnesota and Phoenix. Both teams couldn't wait to let him go; Phoenix even paid him millions to leave.
Even putting aside the off-court stuff, it's easy to see why those teams bailed. Over those three seasons outside of South Florida, Beasley fired up shots like a superstar, using a whopping 27.5 percent of his team's possessions while on the floor. But he didn't make them like a superstar. Of the 16 players who posted at least a 27 percent usage rate over that time, Beasley's true shooting percentage ranked dead last at 49.4 percent. And his spotty defense was equally as poisonous.
But the Heat spotted the problem: Beasley was miscast as a small forward. The Heat drafted him as a big man, groomed him as a big man and now they're rebuilding him as a big man. And that process takes time and a heavy dose of tough love. Everywhere from his contract to his minutes, the Heat made it clear to Beasley from the start that there would be no guarantees. Everything would be earned, not given.
To that end, Erik Spoelstra didn't give Beasley a single minute of in-game action over the Heat's first four games. But Beasley was working behind the scenes. The coaching staff used the practice time to refresh Beasley on the Heat's defensive principles and re-establish him as a scoring stretch 4 who'd also set picks and create for others without the ball.
"Five hundred screens a day," Spoelstra said while watching Beasley set screens over and over in the Heat's last practice. "We've been drilling ad nauseum on how we want him to play and to get other people the ball in other actions. He can make our team better, often times by screening much like LeBron [James] does. Those two guys can be arguably our two most talented screeners off the ball."
Over the last three seasons, Spoelstra already has sold
LeBron James on embracing life as a big man, which meant consistently working out of the post and setting screens for other players. That life existed outside of his comfort zone until he moved to Miami. But Spoelstra won James over with championships. Nowadays Spoelstra continues to reap the benefits by giving Beasley an everyday role model.
"I'm just trying to imitate everything [James] does," Beasley said. "From the way he shoots his jump shot, to the way he's in here lifting weights, to the way he wears socks. He has a blueprint, and I'm just following him."
Beasley's transformation is startling. Last season in Phoenix, Beasley's third most frequent scoring play type put him as the ball handler in a pick-and-roll, according to Synergy tracking. Not the guy setting the screen, mind you, the guy running it. Synergy tells us that he tried to score as the pick-and-roll ball handler 120 times last season, or almost two times per game on average. But it was his least efficient action, spitting out a measly 0.708 points per play.
You know how many plays Beasley has finished as the pick-and-roll ball handler in Miami? Two. In 13 games.
"And those were by accident," Spoelstra said, laughing.
Beasley efficient?
Over the last few seasons, the ball was put in Beasley's hands and his job was to create off the dribble. That license yielded a host of pull-up long 2s and more headaches. Not so anymore. Watch a Heat game and you'll see Beasley setting multiple screens on any given trip down the floor. This helps to funnel Beasley into high-efficiency destinations either by rolling to the rim or flaring to the 3-point line. In Tuesday's game against the
Detroit Pistons, Beasley shot 3-for-3 on corner 3-pointers and 6-for-10 inside the paint. That is the ideal.
Beasley's love affair with the midrange game is waning, too. For the season, just 29 percent of his shots come from midrange, according to NBA.com data, down from 40 percent last season. The Heat haven't specifically demanded Beasley to avoid the least profitable area on the floor, but they've emphasized the importance of getting to the money areas: at the rim, at the line and beyond the arc.
Like practically everyone else on the Heat roster, Beasley's having his most efficient season yet, shooting a LeBron-like 54.7 percent from the floor, 52.9 percent from downtown and 79.2 percent from the line. It's early, but Spoelstra has already trusted Beasley enough to have him anchor lineups without any of Miami's big three on the floor. And those Beasley lineups have been winning ones so far. Spoelstra has evidently believed in Beasley, but James' trust might be the biggest factor to his success.
"LeBron has a lot of confidence in me, and I don't really know where he gets it from," Beasley said. "Sometimes he has more confidence in me than I have for myself. That's good, just to have a group of people that genuinely believe that you can make it -- that you can make it on a good team. I'm just playing basketball the right way now."
Another diamond in the rough
Playing defense the right way will always be a concern with Beasley. If he's not dedicating himself on that end of the floor, Spoelstra has no problem leaving him on the bench, as he did at the beginning of the season.
But so far, the Heat haven't missed a step with him out there. According to NBA.com data, the Heat have held opponents to just 96.9 points per 100 possessions with Beasley on the floor, compared to 100.5 points per 100 possessions when he's riding the pine. For the most part, Beasley hasn't broken the hard-wired machine that is the Heat defense.
This is the power of a winning system and championship-tuned culture. By bringing in Beasley, the Heat took a gamble that no other team wanted to make. Facing a stiff luxury tax and limited flexibility, these free-agent reclamation projects are the Heat's draft picks, providing value for pennies on the dollar. It didn't work out with
Ronny Turiaf, Mike Bibby, Eddy Curry or
Erick Dampier in seasons past. But they struck gold with
Chris Andersen last season after the Nuggets cut him using the amnesty provision. And so far, Beasley is on track to be another gem off the scrap heap.
Once again, one team's trash now appears to be the champs' treasure. But Beasley is different than those other free-agent pickups because Beasley's entering his prime, not on his way out of the NBA. This find has the potential to pay dividends over the long term. After Beasley's reconstruction seems to have given the Heat yet another weapon in their loaded arsenal, the league has to wonder: Is
Greg Oden next?