You didn’t think Patrick Beverley was going to take his verbal lashing from Matt Barnes quietly, did you?
Barnes issued some choice words to Beverley after the Minnesota Timberwolves guard harshly criticized Chris Paul in wake of the Phoenix Suns’ horrendous season-ending loss. To sum it up, Barnes claimed the journeyman guard was in no position to take shots at a future Hall of Fame player like Paul.
Beverley seemingly had no issues with Barnes coming to Paul’s defense. But the 10-year veteran didn’t take kindly to being questioned by another member of the NBA fraternity in a certain regard.
“Matt Barnes made comments yesterday, which he’s entitled to,” Beverley said Tuesday on ESPN’s “Get Up.” “Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, right? But Matt Barnes is also an NBA player. So, for him to make comments supporting his opinion about Chris Paul and all of that, I respect. I totally do. But you go up there and tell your NBA brother and you tell the whole world that this man doesn’t deserve his money when you were just in the NBA, I don’t know, eight, nine, 10 years ago? What if someone said that to you? You’d be ready to fight.
“But now, since you’re not in the league no more, it’s OK for you to talk about this man and not giving him the money he’s worked his entire life to deserve? Like, I don’t understand it. Like, who raised you guys? How are you able to speak about somebody getting cooked, but then when it’s your NBA brother in the same league you played in, same way you take care of your family, all of sudden — ‘he doesn’t deserve this’? Like, no one did that to you. I just don’t understand it.”
The feud with Barnes wasn’t the only dispute Beverley addressed over the ESPN airwaves this week. The hard-nosed guard also returned serve to Brian Windhorst, but Beverley was much more gentle in his response to the NBA insider.
