Malik Beasley has been fighting an uphill battle all season. He had a tumultuous offseason in which he spent time in jail stemming from an incident outside his home in 2020. Then Beasley showed up to camp out of shape and struggled mightily through the first half of the season. But his shots are finally starting to fall, and the timing couldn’t be better for his resurgence. The Minnesota Timberwolves are in the middle of a playoff push with 19 games to go. A sore knee has hobbled Anthony Edwards, so every bucket Beasley drains becomes infinitely more important.
Beasley, 25, has been torching the competition from beyond the three-point line ever since the Timberwolves acquired him from the Denver Nuggets just over two years ago. Already an excellent three-point specialist in Denver, Beasley expanded his role once he got to Minnesota. In his first 14 games with the Wolves, Beasley went nuts before the pandemic halted the season. He scored 20.7 points per game, shooting 42.6 percent from three on 8.2 attempts. Beasley was good enough to earn a 4-year, $60 million contract before the 2020-21 season.
He rewarded Minnesota’s front office with a spectacular first full season in the Twin Cities. While everything else was falling apart around the Wolves, Beasley was arguably their best player last season. In 37 games, he shot 40 percent from deep and averaged 19.6 points per game for a Wolves team that had the worst record in the NBA for much of the season. A 12-game suspension and hamstring injury robbed him of 35 of Minnesota’s last 39 games of the year. He hasn’t been the same player since.
The beginning of this season was an absolute disaster for the sixth-year shooting guard. The Timberwolves started 4-9, and Beasley’s struggles were a big part of that. Through the team’s first 13 games, he shot 30 percent from three and an abysmal 32 percent from the field, averaging just 9.1 points per game over that span. Beasley began to find a bit of traction as the season went on. With many of the starters missing time due to the NBA’s COVID protocols in December, he scored 29 points in a win over the Miami Heat and 33 points on 7-16 from three in a loss to the Utah Jazz. However, one of the best three-point shooters in the league could not find any semblance of consistency.
It’s taken the whole season, but Beasley is finally starting to find his stroke. Since going 2-11 from the field and 0-8 from three in a nine-point loss to the Golden State Warriors on Jan. 27th, Beasley is shooting 45.6 percent from three on 7.4 attempts per contest. The Wolves are 10-4 in that span, and Beasley is averaging 13.1 points per game since the embarrassment in the Bay Area.
Beasley couldn’t have picked a better time to find his game again. The Timberwolves are currently 34-29 and 1.5 games up on the Los Angeles Clippers for the seventh seed in the Western Conference and 2.5 games behind Denver for sixth. They’ll be trying to keep pace for the last 19 games of the season while potentially managing Edwards’ minutes. Beasley scored 20 points off the bench while hitting 6-9 threes in Ant’s absence in a win over Golden State on Tuesday. Beasley will have to be a major part of the offense to keep the Wolves afloat in the playoff race should Ant miss any time down the stretch.
The Timberwolves have been searching for a reliable bench scorer all season. After Jaylen Nowell flirted with the role for a bit, Beasley finally stepped up, and the results are encouraging. Minnesota’s bench unit has been on fire lately, with Beasley leading the charge. That will be all the more important once the playoffs arrive and the rotation shrinks.
Assuming the world-beating starting lineup of Towns, Edwards, D’Angelo Russell, Jarred Vanderbilt, and Patrick Beverley stays intact, that leaves Beasley fighting for playoff minutes with spot starter Jaden McDaniels, Taurean Prince, Nowell, Naz Reid, and Jordan McLaughlin.
Naz is sure to keep his spot as the bench big, and McDaniels has been the de facto sixth starter most of the season. So that leaves the eighth and potentially last rotation spot up for grabs. Nowell has been in and out of the lineup all season. After a nice run during the COVID outbreak in December, he’s cooled off considerably. Prince has been every bit the flamethrower Beasley has over the last month and a half, but it’s hard to see him overtaking Beasley as the three-point specialist off the bench. Chris Finch might need to insert McLaughlin to give the Wolves a proper table-setter when DLo sits, which could cut into any Beasley minutes.
If Malik Beasley can continue to get his groove back and provide a healthy scoring punch off the bench, he’ll be a valuable asset. The Wolves face a potential matchup with the Portland Trail Blazers or New Orleans Pelicans in the play-in tournament and the Golden State or the Memphis Grizzlies after that. Beasley has had an up and down year, but things are looking up as we head into the playoffs.
