Patrick Beverley And Paul George Chirped At One Another On Twitter After Playing On Friday

Paul George was not happy on Friday night. The Oklahoma City Thunder’s MVP candidate had a rough game in the team’s 118-110 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers, scoring 15 points on 5-for-16 shooting. He took some time after the game to criticize the officials — an action which cost him $25,000 — and one day later, Patrick Beverley laughed at him.

Beverley had zero interest in scoring against Oklahoma City, going 0-for-3 from the field with no points. Despite this, Beverley was a game-high +22, largely because he was given the task of making George’s life as difficult as possible. He’s eight inches shorter, 35 pounds lighter, and not as athletic as George, but my word, does the dude have a ton of heart. Here were George’s numbers when being checked by Beverley. They weren’t good.

https://twitter.com/itamar1710/status/1104423611299966976

This video got around to Beverley, who decided to use his Twitter account to rub George’s rough night in one more time. George, meanwhile, wanted him to pump the brakes on his banter.

Beverley, in response, was having none of this.

He also got a little bit of praise from former teammate Sam Dekker, which led to the veteran guard saying he’s in a good place now that he’s healthy.

Beverley is not the Clippers best player, nor is he the team’s most important, but he is the heart and soul of a Los Angeles team that has exceeded expectations — especially in the aftermath of the Tobias Harris trade — and looks like it will secure a postseason berth in the first year of the post-Lob City era. Doc Rivers has put forth one of his best coaching efforts in some time, while every player plays really, really hard and has fit perfectly into the role they’ve been given.

Those last two things might be epitomized the best in Beverley, whose job on the defensive end of the floor is to go out and annoy the hell out of whomever he checks on a given night. He’s Mr. 94 Feet for a reason, and he’s lived up to that nickname this season, showing on a nightly basis why he might be the biggest nuisance in he league.

That effort against George is a good example of how he takes pride in checking an opposing team’s best player and making them work for everything. It doesn’t always lead to dudes getting locked down for 48 minutes, but sometimes, it leads to things like George’s rough evening or LeBron James scoring zero points and attempted two shots in 23 possessions when matched up against Beverley earlier this month. The Lakers, like the Thunder, lost.

This is all to say that George, a legitimately wonderful basketball player, had the sort of really bad night that can happen when getting checked by Beverley. There’s no shame in that. That intensity and commitment to making an opponent’s life hell is a hallmark of Beverley’s game, and as we saw on Saturday, that can spill over to Twitter, too.