Beasley remains in Heat thoughts
Ira Winderman Sun Sentinel Columnist
9:39 p.m. EDT, August 10, 2013
MIAMI The Miami Heat washed their hands, walked away, managed to flip Michael Beasley to the Minnesota Timberwolves for the cap space that allowed the signing of Mike Miller. Three trips to the NBA Finals and two championships followed.
But there also are ties that bind. Expending the No. 2 overall pick in the 2008 NBA Draft is one of those ties. So even after the gifted scorer left, there were those continuing to pull for the combo forward.
They still are. Only now it's getting harder. Especially after this past week, when Beasley was arrested in Scottsdale, Ariz., on suspicion of marijuana possession, at least the fourth known possession issue since Beasley entered the league out of Kansas State one pick after Derrick Rose.
No, this is not a referendum on marijuana, an issue better debated elsewhere. It is, however, a continuing case study of how maturation cannot be assumed, how stunted growth can short-circuit so many other possibilities.
With Beasley still under investigation for sexual-assault claims made in Scottsdale in January, the final straw might be at hand. Already, there is speculation of the Phoenix Suns moving past Beasley a year after signing him to a three-year, $18 million contract last summer.
"For me, with Bease, it's even more heartfelt, because his locker was by mine for so many years," Heat forward Udonis Haslem said this past week when informed of Beasley's latest incident. "And I tried to be as much of a mentor and just guide him in the right direction as much as I could. You know, it's unfortunate and I just wish him the best."
Despite losing his starting role to a still-unproven Beasley in 2009-10, Haslem has remained close to the troubled forward.
"I thought he was past this," Haslem said before a promotional appearance in Boca Raton, "and hopefully it's a bump in the road and he'll continue to move forward and try to get better. I'm looking forward to try to reach out to him in the next couple of days."
The timing of Beasley's latest incident to a degree brought his NBA troubles full-circle. It was during the 2008 NBA Rookie Transition Program when Heat guard Mario Chalmers, then a second-round pick out of Kansas, was sent home for breaking program rules. It later came out that Beasley also was involved in the incident, which was triggered by hotel officials detecting the scent of marijuana, with Beasley fined $50,000.
This past week, the NBA was in the midst of the latest rookie symposium when news of the latest Beasley incident broke. Among those lecturing at the conference was former Heat center Alonzo Mourning, who spent time mentoring Beasley during the forward's two seasons with the Heat.
"It hurts me, it does," Mourning said from the symposium in New Jersey. "I still look at him as part of this NBA fraternity and a brother. And when something happens to one of us, it's a reflection on all of us, past and present. So there's a disappointment there from that perspective.
"Some people get it sooner than others. When I say, 'get it,' I mean the information and support. I can't tell you the conversations I have with young people on a regular basis, in hopes they get it sooner than later."
And that's the thing: With all his issues, now on his third team and possibly heading to a fourth if anyone will still have him, Beasley won't turn 25 until January.
"Experience is the best lesson," Mourning said. "So we can only hope that experience, alone, will be more of an impact on him, than words that I might say to him or might have said to him or anybody else, for that reason, or the words that Pat Riley has said with him.
"You can hope that the experiences alone, that they won't be so devastating, that they won't be debilitating. But, at the same time, that the experience will be influencing enough where he will turn the next page and become a better person from it."