I always feel a little bit awkward when uploading Patrick Beverley highlights. He’s got such a reputation as an intense defender that you just know that a “full” highlight video which only shows his scoring is going to be an incomplete video. The side of the ball where his value is most apparent is simply absent from any video I upload for him. Only a dedicated highlight maker would have the time and patience to comb through the game to find plays where Beverley displayed his exceptional defense. I am not that highlight maker.
By the way, even though DownToBuck does not care about defense, this is the closest that DownToBuck is going to get to caring about defense. DownToBuck can acknowledge that defense exists and express regret that it is not as easily measured in the box-score as scoring is, but he will never care about it. Ever.
So, you can watch this video and see that Beverley had a relatively good scoring performance, but you will never know if he locked down Giannis for multiple crucial possessions, or if he turned Donte DiVincenzo into a quivering pile of frightened meat, or if he played defense on Wes Matthews so hard that Matthews’ ligaments spontaneously blew out of his knees like candy out of a pinata. You’d have to watch the game for that. Which is maybe the way it should be. Watching full games is a useful exercise to undertake. (Says the guy who almost never watches an entire game start to finish and then pretends to have valid opinions on the games and players that he doesn’t watch)