Patrick Beverley is going after the fanbase of one of his old teams.
On the latest episode of his self-titled podcast for Barstool Sports, the former NBA guard Beverley reacted to the news of the Los Angeles Lakers trading away D’Angelo Russell earlier this week. In his remarks, Beverley took a shot at Lakers fans for supposedly hurting the trade value of the team’s own players.
“Lakers fans, the real ones, they know basketball,” said Beverley. “They’ve seen it a lot, they’ve been through a lot. What they don’t understand is their effect on making their own team better.”
“They talk so bad about their players that they actually decrease their value,” he added. “So now, when a trade comes, ain’t nobody just giving you s–t. No one’s trying to help the Los Angeles Lakers. We know you guys want this guy … he’s [worth] a second-round [pick] to every other team. But to the Lakers, he’s two first [rounders]. F–k it. But when you have a fan base, a guy shoots bad, and they crush guys, they decrease their value.”
Here is the full video (but obviously look out for the bad language).
Fans can cause a players value to drop! pic.twitter.com/GEgZJO98e0
— Pat Bev Pod (@PatBevPod) January 2, 2025
While there is obviously a lot more that goes into the scouting process for opposing front offices than what John Q. Driveway writes on X.com about a certain player, Beverley, who played for the Lakers in the 2022-23 season, has a point. Being a Laker inevitably comes with increased media coverage and increased scrutiny, especially from their notoriously ruthless fanbase. Once a player who is struggling for a few games lets all the negativity and toxicity from angry fans get into their head, their poor performance can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, thereby lowering their value in a trade.
In the recent past, certain fragments of the Lakers fanbase have even issued death threats to players as well as to team owner Jeanie Buss. Other Lakers players have also sounded off on the hurtful comments they have gotten on social media after poor performances. With Russell now becoming the latest Laker to get traded after becoming unpopular with the fanbase, the former Laker Beverley thinks that he can sense a trend here.
