Beasley interests me. I think he’s turned the corner so far as being a pro is concerned. He can play the 3 and the 4. His 78% FT% is better than Favors. His 9.0 rebounds per 36 despite playing on the perimeter much of the time is almost equal to Faves’ 9.2. His 2.7 assists per 36 is better than Faves 1.7. He’s obviously a far superior scorer and he’s a career 35.2% 3 point shooter (something Derrick could only dream of) and shot 39+% each of the last two years. With our coaching and continued maturity, I think the kid could be a 40+% consistently. As a stretch 4, that’s insane. Add in the fact that he can score other ways and that he’s a dynamic scorer that we don’t have outside of Mitchell, and a much different one too, and that’s a big asset, at a price that could be reasonable.
The big question of course is how is he on defense? I don’t know the answer to that but would imagine it’s God awful considering the Knicks team defense. That said, they didn’t have Gobert, Ingles, Rubio, Mitchell and company playing d beside him. And I think their coaching staff sucked quite frankly.
So yeah, on a production value basis, I am very interested in Beasley. There’s a reason he was the #2 pick. Crowder can start and Beasley can come in and be the scoring punch off the bench we sorely need.
Having said all this, I think the Knicks retain him at pretty much whatever price.
