Beasley Character Concerns

Last week after the Bulls got the first pick in the lottery, I read a lot of articles on Beasley vs Rose, mostly about the pros and cons of drafting each player. What I noticed was that whenever they talked about Beasley though, they pointed out his character issues, which are obviously a huge Red Flag for Paxson and the Bulls. The only problem was, no one really went into any specifics when it came to those issues. They just all mentioned that Beasley had character issues, but I wanted to hear some specifics, not just that he had “problems”.

I spent most of the day Friday looking around the Internet and emailing some NBA junkies, when I finally got my answer late Friday afternoon. Ryan, a buddy of mine on the East Coast, sent me this article, and then it all made sense. Please take a couple minutes to really read this article, because it goes into detail about some of Beasley's maturity issues. Now we do have to take into account that Beasley was in High School at the time, and was probably just immature and not surrounded by the right people, and that is what caused him to do these things. Most of the things he does in this article are not that off the wall for most teenagers. But, then again, most teenagers are not going to be the face of an entire city for years to come either. In the article, Beasley does take responsibility for those actions towards the end of the article, and does say he is going to change his ways in College. But, again, I can see why these issues would be things that GM’s and Organizations need to look at, especially if you are going to give this “kid” big time money, and make him the face of your franchise.

Anyways, since the article was so obscure, and because I had not really read about this anywhere else, I sent it on to True Hoop’s Henry Abbott, and TSN’s Sam Smith. They seemed happy to have received the article, and Sam Smith even said he was going to pass it on, which is all anyone can really do when it comes to this kind of situation. I’m just glad to have passed it on to such big people in the industry; hopefully the article can somehow make its way into the hands of the Bulls Brass, and somehow help them even more with their scouting on both kids. Now I'm sure they had already read this, or had known about these issues, but it doesn't hurt to be optimistic right? My Blog is really going to affect John Paxson's thinking Baby!!! Haha, I wish.

Now I just wanted to make one thing clear, in no way are we implying that Beasley is not a good, mature kid. For all we know, he has grown from these issues, and will probably take the League by storm next year. The truth of the matter is, none of us really know Beasley personally, or know what he is going through, or went through at that time. Most of us are just going off of what we have read or heard when it comes to most of these character issues. But, that being said, I just wanted to put this article out there for our Bulls fans, so that we actually know what everyone is talking about when they bring up Beasley and Character Issues hand in hand, on a daily basis.

Got to run guys, but let us know what you think too. Thanks for reading.