At the end, a disgusted Patrick Beverley shed his headset and took a frustrated swipe toward the camera before leaving his gaming seat without much to say.
It was one of the rare moments that the ultracompetitive LA Clippers guard was speechless. Despite being swept Saturday by Phoenix’s Deandre Ayton in the semifinals of the NBA 2K Players Tournament, Beverley exited as the star and most entertaining player of the televised video game tourney.
During his run to the semis, Beverley gave everyone watching at home a taste of the nonstop motor on his mouth, with his trash talking often going viral during wins over Portland’s Hassan Whiteside and Cleveland’s Andre Drummond.
Before their matchup, Beverley told Drummond that he had been “working out like a madman” during the quarantine.
“I already know, you have no off switch, man,” Drummond said.
Drummond would find out that is also the case with video games, as Beverley kept talking throughout much of his 69-62 victory over Drummond while using the Sixers to beat the Bucks.
Beverley didn’t just chirp while scoring on offense. He talked as much smack while playing defense. In fact, Beverley would talk about his virtual team’s defensive rotations as if he were on the floor with the Clippers in real life.
“This man cold at defense in real life and in the video game,” Drummond said.
At the end of his 84-54 opening win over Whiteside using the Bucks against the Lakers, Beverley taunted the Trail Blazers’ big man by telling him to play hard all the way to the end despite the blowout, and celebrating that he kept Whiteside from reaching 55 points.
At one point when Whiteside messed up an alley-oop attempt while using LeBron James in the video game, Beverley even found a way to talk trash to virtual LeBron.
“Video game James, he’s got some years on him now,” Beverley said. “He can’t just be jumping all over the rim now.”
When Whiteside said that Giannis Antetokounmpo is like “a cheat code” in the video game, Beverley quickly corrected Whiteside.
“It ain’t Giannis playing, I’m controlling him,” Beverley said. “So I’m just a cheat code.”
Beverley had beaten Clippers teammate Paul George, considered by some to be one of the best gamers in the NBA, in a 2K celebrity event previously, and came in extremely confident in his chances of winning the 2K Players Tournament.
“I guess people forgot I was overseas for five years with nothing … every day I played 2K all day,” he said on SportsCenter before playing his first game of the tournament. “That is one of my hobbies. I’m the real deal.
“Seriously, it’s not a joke, when I played for the Rockets, I went five, six years straight, plane rides, not a loss.”
When Beverley and Ayton played their semifinal, the conversation turned toward the real Suns and Clippers. The Clippers beat the Suns in two out of three meetings before the NBA season was halted due to the coronavirus pandemic.
But Ayton was touting the Suns’ 130-122 win over the Clippers in the third game of the season, which came with George out as he recovered from offseason surgeries on both of his shoulders. Ayton also did not play in the game as he served a suspension.
“Y’all won the second game of the season. … Paul George didn’t play,” Beverley said. “And you holding on to that. You got to let go of that hurt.”
Beverley, though, was silenced by Ayton in their video game showdown. Ayton used the Brooklyn Nets to beat Beverley, who was playing with the Boston Celtics, to open the best-of-three series. Then Ayton really humbled Beverley by using himself and the Phoenix Suns to eliminate Beverley, who was using the Denver Nuggets 74-67.
Ayton blocked shots inside with his virtual self and even hit a 3-pointer.
“Put some respect on it,” Ayton said to Beverley, who was in disbelief.
The tournament started with Beverley initially a little quiet as he felt out Whiteside before blowing out the Portland big man. And it ended with Beverley walking off the screen in disgust from his video game room in Houston.
It’s one of the few times people will see Beverley speechless.
“If you ever want to see an example of Pat being quiet, you watch the first couple minutes of that game against Hassan Whiteside [and] guys are texting like, ‘What’s wrong with Pat?'” Clippers president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank said last week about teammates watching Beverley play. “‘Is Pat sick? Is Pat under the weather? Does the volume not work on Pat’s control?’ And then all of a sudden, he started to get a little rhythm.”
And everyone else got to see in this NBA 2K Players Tournament what the Clippers see on a daily basis.
“Pat was back being Pat,” Frank said.