[Youngmisuk] Bev: I could have been the best at moving weight

daywalker02 · Nov 24, 2019

Entering this season, Rivers wanted Beverley to continue to play with the anger and intensity that made him one of the leaders of the team. But Rivers made it clear that he wants Beverley to play with emotion, not be emotional.

Channeling his emotion is something Beverley has been working on in recent years, but he has been growing since one fateful summer in Chicago.

When asked to consider what his life would be without professional sports, the Clippers guard doesn't hesitate: "I probably would've been the best drug dealer in the world."
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He had been suspended from the University of Arkansas basketball team for his junior year for plagiarism. Upon returning home, Beverley was faced with a dilemma -- pursue a pro career or try to survive by earning a living on the streets.

With a 2-year-old son and a newborn daughter, Beverley had a $5,000 advance payment from an agent but felt his choice was made.

"Mouths need to be fed, you know?" Beverley said. "Coming from where I come from, I didn't have the luxury of having a trust fund. Or money from generations. Or the luxury of hoppin' into the family business, you know?

"It's either hoop or you sell dope."

Lisa got their first apartment on the corner of Parkside and Washington when Patrick was 4. She tried to shield her son from the realities of their unforgiving environment, like stepping over someone doing cocaine in the stairwell. But Patrick noticed more than his mother ever realized. He saw the drug-peddling boyfriends she dated for protection.

He learned how to push drugs.

"My mom had to do what she had to do to keep food [and a roof] over my head," Beverley said. "So the guys that she did date were all drug dealers. I got the schooling from all the guys that she dated, and that's the norm in Chicago."

One of them, Adlai "Dexter" Hood, was a dealer she dated for four years. He was shot eight times and killed in his car, according to Lisa. Patrick named his oldest daughter Adlaia after him.

Lisa had no idea that Patrick sold drugs after he left Arkansas; he told her only a few weeks ago. But he didn't tell her how he learned to push.

"Oh, Jesus!" Lisa blurted at Staples Center when told of Patrick saying he learned the tricks of dealing from some of her boyfriends. "It breaks my heart. I feel like I failed him."
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Beverley grew up an only child, but to him, Donovan Morris was like his little brother. The two were three years apart but inseparable.

"They were raised like brothers," Beverley's mother said. "[His grandmother] adopted a lot of foster kids. Pat spent a lot of time there, so they were all raised in one house."

But on a Saturday night a few weeks after his car accident, Beverley drove Morris to West Kamerling Avenue in Humboldt Park. Something felt off.

He repeatedly tried to convince Morris to head back with him, to go eat at his grandmother's place as they had done so many times.

"Let's go, let's go," Beverley said to Morris, to no avail.

Not long after Beverley drove off, he got a call telling him that Morris was dead, shot multiple times at around 11 p.m. Beverley and his mother went to the hospital to identify the 16-year-old's body.

"I shouldn't have brought him over there," Beverley said, replaying the moment in his head like he has thousands of times before. "I should've grabbed [him]. Anything, you know?

"You Monday night quarterbacking, you can think of anything. I took that on the chin a lot."

Two days after Morris died, Beverley got a call to play overseas in Ukraine.

"I'm going to play basketball and not be in his shoes," Beverley said of what ran through his head 48 hours after Morris' death. "People talk about like, I don't know, sacrificial lambs and all that. And of course, I don't compare him to a lamb, but his sacrifice kind of woke up our family."

"It forced me to go hustle -- the right way."
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https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id...rick-beverley-never-forgets-humble-beginnings

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[Youngmisuk] Bev: I could have been the best at moving weight

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