Young, immature people are not uncommon in the NBA, in sports, or even in life. It’s just that, in the context of the NBA, their immaturity is magnified and broadcast for all to see. We don’t always see young Willy firing spitballs at Jeffrey from across the room in seventh grade, but we always see, many times over, Hassan Whiteside blindside Kelly Olynyk.
It’s not an incurable malady, immaturity. Some simply grow out of it, but others need a mentor to show them the way. Luckily, Whiteside finds himself on a team full of total professionals to help him along his path. From Udonis Haslem to Luol Deng to Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, he’s got plenty of professionals to turn to for advice. So it makes perfect sense Whiteside mentioned Michael Beasley as one of his many mentors.
Surely, he was joking, right? According to Beasley, no, he was not.
When the Heat’s talented but sometimes immature center mentioned Beasley among the players mentoring him after getting ejected from two games in a one-week span, many were baffled. Beas hasn’t exactly had a glowing reputation in NBA circles but his reasoning makes a ton of tense.
“It’s funny because everybody looks at me or not even me, looks at a troublemaker, and really wouldn’t want him to hinder the success of anyone else,” Beasley said. “Then they look at a Dwyane Wade and then a LeBron James, well, that’s the perfect guy to listen to. Well not always. Sometimes you want to listen to the guy that’s been through some things, the guy that fell off the mountain and climbed back and really that’s what Hassan needed. That’s what I needed. That’s what I had in UD my first couple years, somebody that didn’t have the high road to take his whole career.”
Bosh and Wade have the respect, and not just because of their championship pedigree, but as much as they can teach Whiteside, they can’t really put themselves in his shoes. Bosh and Wade’s trajectory to the NBA followed a far straighter path than his. Beasley, meanwhile, has experienced his fair share of mistakes. He was a highly touted prospect, and though he was picked second overall, concerns and bouts of immaturity followed him everywhere. He was promising in Miami, a reclamation project in Minnesota, and little more than a footnote in Phoenix. But now he’s back with the Heat, perhaps not permanently but hopefully for enough time to pass on his own experiences to Whiteside.
There are better role models on the Heat than Beasley, but there may not be a player more relatable for Whiteside. There may not be anyone who can empathize with some of his foibles and larger mistakes. Perhaps Beasley’s mentorship of Whiteside will help both of them.
