Malik Beasley is exactly the kind of scorer that can bring the Nuggets back from their 1-2 series deficit. What I mean there is, if you stop pretending that he’s your sixth-man scorer off the bench and make him the second option behind Nikola Jokic, it’s basically guaranteed that he’ll pop for twenty, maybe twenty-five points.
Mike Malone will be hesitant to disrupt the scoring hierarchy. Jamal Murray, Gary Harris, Paul Millsap, and maybe even Will Barton all are viewed as being ahead of Beasley in the pecking order. That’s a lot of players wondering where their touches went and getting jelly over Beasley taking twenty shots a game. But they won’t be so jelly when Beasley brings them three straight wins and Popovich starts crying halfway through game six because Beasley has thirty points and he knows his coaching career is over.
Why do I have this much faith in Beasley? Because he hasn’t yet done anything this series that makes me doubt him. I have a short memory and don’t remember all the times in the regular season when he was bricking everything (like most of March). All I remember is that he’s been an accurate shooter in the first three games of this series and that he could probably shoulder a bigger role.
And after this change is made, then the Nuggets can make Isaiah Thomas their sixth-man scorer off the bench. I think I am joking but I’m not sure.