LeBron James and Patrick Beverley will share the NBA court as teammates after Beverley was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers for Talen Horton-Tucker and Stanley Johnson yesterday. Beverley is going to be a valuable addition to the Darvin Ham system that will prioritize his ability to defend and make open 3s.
The Lakers are intimately familiar with what Beverley brings to the table, as he played a massive role in the Lakers-Clippers rivalry in 2019-20. PatBev ended a game with one of the clutches blocks of the season, stopping LeBron from draining a 3 with a block to win the game for his Clippers.
During that time, Beverley was openly antagonizing LeBron and the Lakers consistently. When PatBev was asked to describe the challenge of defending LeBron James, Beverley simply told everyone that it is not a challenge to guard LeBron and kept repeating ‘no challenge’ as the reporter tried to reframe his question to get a genuine answer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJZmupZXU3s
Beverley is notorious for trying to prove a point on the court every time he steps on it. He tends to boast the most against LeBron’s teams because of the magnitude of having beat someone like him. He did so with the Clippers and took it a few steps further when the Minnesota Timberwolves beat the Lakers last season.
However, the relationship between Beverley and LeBron on a personal level is quite strong. PatBev has told the story of how he and LeBron became friends in 2010, so the competitive fire between them was never going to hurt their personal equation.
The Lakers have a lot of things still to figure out. Hopefully, they can construct this roster to ensure that the team can contend to make the playoffs at least, instead of the season looking like a doomed exercise for LeBron and Anthony Davis.
