Why is Patrick Beverley beefing with Brandon Jennings? Inside pair's latest spat on social media
During his playing career, Patrick Beverley had a knack for attracting controversy with his antics on and off the court. Now, the NBA veteran has turned many heads as he verbally spars with a spitfire guard that he used to defend.
Though Beverley has disagreed with Brandon Jennings before, this latest spat between the two escalated into a heated back-and-forth on a livestream. The seeds were planted in late March when Jennings, who was on a Playback recording with podcaster Gilbert Arenas, decided to call out several ex-NBA players — all of whom, in his mind, he could defeat one-on-one:
"I want to play Jeff Teague, I want to play Ty Lawson, and I want to play Lou Will," Jennings said on Playback.
Though he wasn't named by Jennings in that tirade, Patrick Beverley decided to weigh in on the matter by floating the idea of hosting a one-on-one tournament to showcase some star-studded matchups:
"a lot of former players like Lou Will, Brandon Jennings and Ty Lawson are talking 1 on 1 basketball. We want to host a 1 vs 1 PPV like a boxing card, with undercard matchups and sponsorships. It would be like a Rough N Rowdy but for basketball," Beverley tweeted.
After this tweet was posted, hostilities were renewed as Jennings argued that Patrick Beverley shouldn't even be in that particular conversation, claiming that he never averaged 10 points per game in a single NBA season.
On his show, "The Pat Bev Podcast," Beverley name-dropped Brandon Jennings and challenged his claim regarding statistics:
"They say Pat Bev can’t play, quoted Brandon Jennings, said Pat Bev can’t play the 1v1 tournament," Beverley said on his podcast in early April. "That's fine, you know motherf***s scared, they scared. But I also looked up playoff numbers: Me and Brandon Jennings average the same amount of points…I averaged more assists and rebounds."
Things came to a head when both Beverley and Jennings joined a Playback livestream with Arenas. In this livestream, Jennings doubled down on his claim about Beverley never averaging 10 points in the NBA, while Beverley directly challenged Jennings to a one-on-one:
"Alright, let's just be regular hoopers, then. Let's play," Beverley told Jennings.
"You can't insert yourself into nothin' you ain't qualified for," Jennings later fired back.
Clearly, the competitive fire of both former NBA players has been lit, and it might just be a matter of time before their war of words becomes an actual duel of basketball skills on the court.
Brandon Jennings stats vs Patrick Beverley
To Jennings' credit, he had quite a prolific NBA career for the most part. In nine seasons, he averaged 14.1 points, 3.0 rebounds, and 5.7 assists per game. For his career, Jennings shot 38.7% from the field and 34.5% from deep. In terms of scoring, his best season was 2011-12 when he averaged 19.1 ppg on 41.8% FG shooting in his third year with the Milwaukee Bucks.
Meanwhile, Patrick Beverley played 12 seasons in the NBA and averaged 8.3 ppg, 4.1 rpg, and 3.4 apg. He shot 41.3% from the field and 37.1% from beyond the arc. Beverley's career high in terms of scoring average was 12.2 ppg as an LA Clipper in 2017-18. The caveat, of course, is that Beverley's calling card was defense; three times in his career, he was named to the All-Defensive Team.
Fighting words from Patrick Beverley and Brandon Jennings lead to inaccurate claims regarding statistics
As Jennings and Beverley have gone on their verbal onslaught, some inaccurate claims have popped up, particularly when it comes to NBA stats.
For one, there's Jennings' claim that Beverley never averaged 10 points in the league. Per Basketball Reference, Beverley averaged over 10 points three times in his 12-year career.
Then there's Patrick Beverley's assertion that he and Jennings averaged "the same number of points" in the playoffs. While his 8.2 ppg across nine playoff runs is indeed close to Jennings' 8.9 ppg in four playoff runs, Beverley never averaged more than 12 ppg in a single year. Jennings, on the other hand, had 18.7 ppg as a rookie in 2010 and 13.3 ppg in 2013.
Funnily enough, one of the other ex-NBA players dragged into this mess had a factual slip-up of his own. When Lou Williams made erroneous claims about having either his first 40-piece or his second 40-piece against Patrick Beverley, Grok — the AI of the social media platform X — corrected him, not once but twice.
"Hey , no worries on the mix-up! Your first 40-point game was Jan 8, 2016, vs. the Thunder (44 pts), and the second was Dec 3, 2016, vs. the Grizzlies (40 pts). Beverley was with the Rockets both times, not the opposing team," Grok tweeted.
NBA fans, of course, would much rather watch these talented players take their disputes to the court rather than throw up inaccurate numbers in social media posts.