Clippers re-sign Patrick Beverley (3 years, $40M)

[...]

The Rockets would finally give him a shot in 2013, and he was ready to take someone's spot.

Beverley didn't care that his new teammates in Houston didn't know who he was. He took one look at James Harden and simply saw another human standing across from him. So he did what he does to any human in his way: lock him up. He and Harden squared off every day.

"I really didn't give a f--k. My attitude on the court is the same attitude that I had when I was in the streets," Beverley says. "You're the best player. I'm the best defender. I understand that if he gets the best of me, that helps me; if I get the best of him, that helps him. And it helps the team.

"I never went with the NBA motto of, You play with a star you have to just give in. I'm not like that. I'm gonna be myself. I'm gonna play my game."

He battled Jeremy Lin, too, for the starting spot. Alarcon recalls Beverley telling him that sometimes before drill work, Lin would sit down, rest and take his sneakers off. "Pat started getting pissed," Alarcon says. "He'd run up to [Lin] and say, 'Yo, I can't take your job if you're not suited up and playing.'"

Sometimes assistant coach Dean Cooper would have to tell Beverley to cool out. "He was on full throttle all the time," says Cooper, now with the Bulls. That elevated the team. "Pat will bring the best out of anybody," says Ronnie Brewer, a former Rockets teammate. "Dude forces people to be better."

Beverley didn't end up getting any starts in the regular season as a rookie. But then came the playoffs.

One afternoon, Beverley was driving down the street next to the Toyota Center, on his way home after shootaround, when teammate Chandler Parsons called: "I just talked to [coach Kevin McHale]. He says he's gonna start you tonight! I think you're starting tonight!"

"For real, bro? Don't play with me, bro."

"No, bro, I'm serious. I swear to God."

They laughed a bit and then hung up. Beverley dialed his mom. "What's up, Booda?" Lisa said. Only family members and friends from childhood call Beverley that. (When he was a child, his eyes were so big it looked like someone said boo and scared him, so Lisa's younger sister came up with "Booda.")

Clutching his phone, Beverley couldn't find the words. He broke down crying. He had made it.

Beverley started five of six games in that postseason and all but one game he appeared in the next year. He never quite makes it, though, in his mind. Every day, he thinks he has to make it all over again. He needs some hurdle, something to overcome. So it would make sense that, even after he'd help the Rockets to four playoff berths—including a conference finals berth in 2014-15—as a vocal leader on the team, he saw only more hurdles when he moved into a similar role with the Clippers.

[...]