Kevin Love, cult icon, borderline religious figure, and rebounding savant, has begun blogging for GQ. These are exciting times.
In Love’s second post, he introduces those surely to be blog regulars: his teammates. Jonny Flynn, Darko Milicic, and Wesley Johnson area all introduced to Love’s audience, but his true masterwork as a writer to date is his quintessential description of Michael Beasley:Michael Beasley is new to our team, but he’s old news to me because we’ve been friends for so long. I’ve known Mike since I was 13 or 14 years old. We played against each other on lots of [traveling] teams. Even then he was always real loud, the guy at the back of the bus who’s screaming and yelling and goofing around, and the coaches in the front are always yelling at him to knock it off. And now? It’s like he’s 22 years old going on eight.
When our team trainers are giving us our vitamins—Vitamin D, all that kind of stuff—he’s like “Oh, no, I’m not eating that. I gotta have Flinstones vitamins.” He’s that kind of guy. He still loves Spongebob Squarepants. You’ll be hearing a lot of crazy stories about him. On the floor, he’s adapting great to our team. He’s a sexy superstar type of player. People come to watch him. They’ll get up on their feet even for some of his mistakes, because even his mistakes are so exciting. He’s a great player and he really gets the crowd involved.
I’m not sure anyone has better encapsulated Beas in 200 words to date. That sounds like the caricature that we all hope/fear Beasley is and will be, but Love’s finale is just as telling. Even with all of his mis-steps, Beasley is still a tremendous talent, and he still captures our attention. He was traded to what could be the worst team in the league, and yet he’s still every bit as intriguing as he ever was. Love’s right. Beasley is a sexy superstar type player, even if he’s not a sexy superstar.
Hat/tip to Trey Kerby/Trez Kirby/Tré Kerbé of The Basketball Jones.
