Now that he has finally made up with Russell Westbrook, Patrick Beverley is moving full-time to a different blood nemesis.
Appearing this week on Kevin Hart’s online series “Cold as Balls,” the Los Angeles Lakers guard Beverley spoke on his time across town with the LA Clippers. During his remarks, Beverley got in a diss of Phoenix Suns guard Chris Paul.
“Chris Paul was on the Clippers,” said Beverley. “Then he left and I came on the Clippers. The Clippers went to the Western Conference Finals the only time. They didn’t go there with Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, and the Lob City. They went there with me.”
Beverley was also critical of the Clippers themselves for allegedly giving him a lowball contract offer the summer after that playoff run.
“For them to come in and [say], ‘We’re only looking for you get 5, 6 million dollars,’ I felt like that was the ultimate spit to my face when I literally just changed this whole organization around,” Beverley said. “We went to [the] Western Conference Finals. I didn’t think I got the fair end of the stick.”
The former All-Defensive Teamer Beverley has spoken about that summer of negotiations before (ultimately resulting in him being sent to Minnesota). The last time that we heard Beverley discuss the subject though, he was a bit more conciliatory.
To Beverley’s other point, he is right that Paul never made it past the second round in six years as the Clippers’ starting point guard. Paul was then traded to the Houston Rockets in 2017 for a package that included Beverley, who became the Clippers’ new starter and helped them make their first-ever conference finals berth in 2021.
But there is an obvious reason why Beverley decided to point that out — he despises Paul from the core of his being. The two players, who are genuinely each other’s antitheses in terms of both play style and personality, have had some ugly on-court incidents with one another before. Beverley also was a guest host on ESPN earlier this year and made a point of insulting Paul.
