While many fans recognize Michael Beasley as an NBA star who played alongside LeBron James, Beasley admits there was a period in his life when he did not feel like the star athlete he was perceived to be. During an appearance with Shannon Sharpe’s “Club Shay Shay,” the Washington D.C. native opened up about his season playing on the L.A. Lakers.
“I wasn’t a basketball player then, my mom died,” Beasley said candidly. “I just couldn’t hold on. I just couldn’t play no more. I ain’t like that year.”
That year was 2018. At the time, Beasley was playing for the New York Knicks, which allowed him to easily travel between New York and D.C. to visit his mother, Fatima Smith, who had been battling cancer. However, in July 2018, the former Knicks player was signed to the Los Angeles NBA team, which took a significant toll on his ability to be there for his mother.
“When I signed with the Lakers, that’s when we found out my mom had been lying to us about having stage two cancer, and it was stage four,” he said, recalling his brother being the one to unveil the news. “He showed me the side she wasn’t showing us. So we didn’t know, but every day she would get up and make sure she took her morphine so she could have that phone call.”
During the 2018-2019 season, Beasley missed 13 games caring for his mother who ultimately passed in December 2018. When he returned to the court in January 2019, he quickly became the subject of jokes and social media memes when he accidentally checked into a game wearing the wrong shorts. However, while sports commentators and social media users teased him for that moment, the former NBA star revealed that the mistake was a result of him grieving not only his mother, but also his cousin, who had passed recently.
Explaining how grief took away his desire to even want to play basketball, Beasley recalls constantly feeling sad to the point he would cry without even realizing it. Despite the handful of teammates who got a glimpse of what he was going through, the athlete says no one else knew, not because he didn’t want them to know, but rather because he didn’t know how to vocalize it.
“I didn’t know how [to tell anyone]. I couldn’t. My whole life. From day one, from the day I got drafted. I was going through it all,” he explained. “And it’s like if I say it, y’all [the public] just laugh at it. If I act out on it or if I just slip out because I’m going through reality outside of this game, y’all just laugh at it.”
“I’ve never been able to have a good game without talking about my past. Y’all don’t know my mental. No…nobody asked me sh** y’all ain’t care,” he added.
This is not the first time Beasley has opened up about how much the public narrative impacted him while in the league. While appearing on “The Pivot” podcast, the former Lakers players shared: “Everything I did was [under] a f—g microscope.”
“Everything I did, wrong, right and different. And all I wanted to do was play basketball. Every time they said something f—ked up about me, I was in the f—ing gym playing basketball. Every time they said I got pulled over with a bag of f—ing weed, every time somebody f—ing lied on me about something.”
Through the years, he has taken ownership of his mistakes, from NBA fines to the stress-induced substance abuse that landed him in rehab. However, today, as he still carries the emotional weight of these experiences, Beasley’s one wish is that someone had just listened to him at the time, because if he had some support, he believes his story would have been different.
“How many times I tried to reintroduce myself? Go back and look at it. How many times I tried to apologize for who y’all thought I was? Go back and look at it. Y’all laughed at it every single time…every single time,” he said. “Just listen. Stop telling me what I mean. Just hear me. Stop telling me who you think I am. I’ve been saying my whole life. Stop telling me who you think I am. We judge decisions without knowing the choices.”
“So just listen, and not just to me,” he concluded.
