Jalen Brunson, Patrick Beverley Are This Week's Sports Hero, Zero

by Julian Spivey

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Hero

​New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson is on a burner right now. He’s having one of the hottest streaks we’ve ever seen in NBA Playoff history with four consecutive games of 40 or more points. That’s something only three other players in NBA history have accomplished: Jerry West (who holds the record with six straight), Michael Jordan (four) and Bernard King (four).

Brunson is amidst a streak of playoff scoring more dominant than anything we’ve ever seen from LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Kobe Bryant, Larry Bird, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, etc.
Oh, and by the way, the game preceding Brunson’s four-game 40-plus point-scoring streak was a 39-point performance against the Philadelphia 76ers on April 25. What a slacker he was that night!

The 76ers certainly didn’t have anything for Brunson in the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs and the Indiana Pacers struggled against him in game one of the round two series that began on Monday (May 6).  

We’ll find out tonight in game two of the series if Brunson can take one step closer to West’s NBA record of six straight 40-plus point playoff games. He’s the hottest player in the NBA at the moment. 

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Zero

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We’ve seen some wild displays of poor sportsmanship and overall disrespectful behavior from NBA players before but the one-two combination of sheer stupidity that came from Milwaukee Bucks guard Patrick Beverley on Thursday, May 2 when his team was eliminated from the playoffs by the Indiana Pacers is one of the worst examples of such we’ve seen in a while.

​Late in the final game of the series, Beverley threw a basketball into the stands at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis not once but twice. The first toss into the crowd hit a female fan rather hard in the face with a ball that had some serious zip on it. The second malicious intent behind it.

The fans had been taunting Beverley, which is something I’ve never liked from sports fans, and we don’t know what was being said but athletes must know that the only reasonable action they can do in such situations is to have security at the arena eject the fans (which Beverley admitted was something asked to him before the incident he now calls “inexcusable.”

The NBA has seen some truly despicable interactions between players and fans before – almost always instigated by the fans – but it’s never a great look for the league when its athletes are doing things that could harm spectators.

The second thing Beverley did on Thursday that was idiotic and the one that I took more offense to was his refusal to answer the question of an ESPN reporter because she wasn’t subscribed to his podcast (does every NBA player have a podcast these days?). Not only did he refuse to answer the question but he physically moved away her tape recorder and wouldn’t let her in the media scrum.

Being an asshole to the press is never going to sit well with me but doing it because they don’t subscribe to your podcast is a particularly pissant reason for doing so.

Beverley showed himself to be a tool on Thursday night and it’s something the league should consider this offseason. No punishment has been announced for Beverley as yet but if he’s not suspended multiple games at the beginning of next season for these actions it will be too lax of a response from the league.