RightToCensor
03-26-2014, 07:18 PM
Talks about his background growing up in Chicago.
Pressure is all Patrick Beverley knew before finding a steady home with the Houston Rockets and becoming arguably the best hard-nosed backcourt defender in the NBA.
Pressure, as in trying to improve his social status while growing up in the rough west side of Chicago and attending what he referred to as the "worst high school in the area, which they called a mini prison."
Pressure to resist selling drugs in his neighborhood, where some of his cousins ended up in jail and a close cousin and friends died of gun violence.
Pressure to find a hoops job after being dismissed from the Arkansas basketball team in 2008 for cheating on his classwork, and waiting months for an overseas opportunity, unsure if he'd ever play again.
Getting cut by Miami.
Pressure to keep his NBA dream alive after being the last cut in Miami Heat training camp in 2009, which "killed" his confidence, thinking he wasn't good enough anymore.
And pressure to do everything he could to stick around the league after getting a call from the Rockets in January 2013. For Beverley, that meant only one thing: being an unrelenting gnat on the defensive end. That specialty enabled him to become the starting point guard this season on a team that needed a physical defensive spark.
Being informed by Chandler Parsons that he would be a starter. :cry:
[QUOTE]When teammate Chandler Parsons told Beverley the news on the final day of training camp that he would be the starter, he pulled over to the side of the road on his way home after practice and broke down in tears. It sunk in that he had finally made it, and he knew defense was a key catalyst.
"I think that some people call it a chip. Mine was more like a mountain," Beverley, 25, told Bleacher Report. "I just had so much aggression and so much built up and so much anger, especially because many other teams passed up on me. I just wanted to go out there and every single night just make it hard for the opponent to dribble the ball up the court
Pressure is all Patrick Beverley knew before finding a steady home with the Houston Rockets and becoming arguably the best hard-nosed backcourt defender in the NBA.
Pressure, as in trying to improve his social status while growing up in the rough west side of Chicago and attending what he referred to as the "worst high school in the area, which they called a mini prison."
Pressure to resist selling drugs in his neighborhood, where some of his cousins ended up in jail and a close cousin and friends died of gun violence.
Pressure to find a hoops job after being dismissed from the Arkansas basketball team in 2008 for cheating on his classwork, and waiting months for an overseas opportunity, unsure if he'd ever play again.
Getting cut by Miami.
Pressure to keep his NBA dream alive after being the last cut in Miami Heat training camp in 2009, which "killed" his confidence, thinking he wasn't good enough anymore.
And pressure to do everything he could to stick around the league after getting a call from the Rockets in January 2013. For Beverley, that meant only one thing: being an unrelenting gnat on the defensive end. That specialty enabled him to become the starting point guard this season on a team that needed a physical defensive spark.
Being informed by Chandler Parsons that he would be a starter. :cry:
[QUOTE]When teammate Chandler Parsons told Beverley the news on the final day of training camp that he would be the starter, he pulled over to the side of the road on his way home after practice and broke down in tears. It sunk in that he had finally made it, and he knew defense was a key catalyst.
"I think that some people call it a chip. Mine was more like a mountain," Beverley, 25, told Bleacher Report. "I just had so much aggression and so much built up and so much anger, especially because many other teams passed up on me. I just wanted to go out there and every single night just make it hard for the opponent to dribble the ball up the court