Michael Beasley

When it was announced that Beasley was going to play in a pickup game in New York City, people on Twitter predicted that somehow it would end in a fistfight. And then it did .

Later this summer, when just about every other superstar in the NBA was hosting charity games, Beasley wanted to stage one of his own. And so he did, and it became a disorganized mess . After the game, when he talked to the media, he told a reporter that the NBA lockout is "retarded".

When ... When ... The stories go on forever. And nobody even get worked up about poor choice of words with that last one, because man, what a perfect adjective for a pothead to choose.

All of it's just context to the latest controversy— his lawsuit against his former agent , Joel Bell, where he alleges that Bell and his former AAU coach, Curtis Malone, provided him and his family with benefits throughout his teenage years, with the implicit understanding that Beasley would hire Bell to represent him when he turns pro. If the other stories were funny-stupid, then this is where Beasley's story takes on a different dimension.

Suddenly he's graduated from the NBA's sideshow to a centerpiece in the ongoing conversation about morality in amateur athletics. The world of amateur hoops is rife with predators offering short-term capital in exchange for long-term debt, and here we have a former All-American and current NBA starter laying the whole thing transparent like we've never quite seen before.

A quick synopsis of the allegations:

The twist comes at the end, though. As the lawsuit reads, "In or around September 2008, Beasley learned, through a third party, that Malone and Bell had been making payments to his mother without his knowledge or consent for years. He felt betrayed by the men in whom he had placed his trust and immediately terminate the Agent Contract and Merchandising Agreement with Bell and dramatically shifted his relationship with Malone at the same time."

For instance: He felt betrayed when he found out that his agent had been taking care of his mother? He didn't think it was suspicious when his mother moved to Kansas State with him and had a new car and house when she got there? And this "betrayal" just happens to crystallize after Bell had negotiated the parameters of a shoe deal for him, but before he signed it and would've paid Bell a hefty commission?

In fact, Beasley's lawsuit is a counter-suit. His former agent filed a lawsuit earlier this year seeking unpaid wages for the contracts he negotiated, but never got paid for. Maybe he was exploited, but he received real service, too. The claims in the lawsuit sound sensational, and from a broad perspective, context leaves Beasley looking a lot less sympathetic here. You want to talk about betrayal?

Beasley's the boy crying wolf after wolves saved his life.

This is where the story gets personal for me. Beasley's two years younger than me and we're from the same area, so I've silently rooted for him to succeed since he was a star in high school. Then when he was a star in college, when he was a rookie in Miami, and then last season, after he'd been cast off by the new-look Heat and left to toil in T'wolves obscurity.

Plenty of writers will see the Beasley saga as a morality play in real life. A fascinating glimpse at the grayed morality of the hoops underworld. A tale of greed run amok on both sides, rupturing relationships for good. Or maybe it's an excuse to launch into a sermon on the the NBA's age limit or the enduring futility of college hoops' attempts at feigning amateurism. It's all of those things if you want it to be, but for me it just sucks.

Growing up, I was more of a football fan until about the fifth grade, when I subconsciously started to love basketball more. Football was still great, but basketball spoke to me in a way that nothing else in life ever has. I grew up in the D.C. area just like Beasley, but instead of P.G. County, I was in the upper left hand corner of the city, surrounded by wealthy white people busy taking over the world. About as divorced from Beasley's reality as anyone. But basketball spoke to me because I wasn't blind.

I love the game because it's like a kaleidoscope. Of vivid personalities, highlights, and stories that render a world so weird and dissonant that it's almost a perfect microcosm of reality. If you took a kaleidoscope to the D.C. area, for instance, you'd see a city dominated by the scenes of minorities who comprise an overwhelming majority, and then a smattering of powerful white people tucked away in one corner, huddled together pretending they run the world.

Looking at the demographics in basketball—the people who play it and run it at the community levels, and the men who run it from on high in the NCAA and NBA—it's hard not to see some parallels here. That's why basketball sometimes feels like more than just a sport.

If you want to say he was taken advantage of by "predators" like Curtis Malone and that agent, that's fine, and it makes for a neatly compartmentalized talking point if you're looking to rail against the NCAA, the NBA, AAU, or everything in between.

But look at the hoops ecosystem as a whole, and the world of big time basketball is hard to distinguish from the poverty-stricken landscapes that produce the lion's share of big time basketball players. Those landscapes are full of predators, many of whom have nothing to do with basketball. 

So in the end, it's not hard to see why kids and their parents turn to "street agents" and AAU coaches as leaders. It'd be crazy not to. If you were dirt poor and surrounded by wrong turns in every direction, you'd probably let someone guide you. If you were a single-mother with four kids to raise, you'd take the cash they offer. If you were Michael Beasley, you'd embrace the stability of Curtis and Monica Malone's house. You'd call their son, Nolan Smith, your step-brother. And it would all be a million times better than a hundred other alternatives.

This is why "amateurism and NCAA politics have no place in this conversation. Because a lot of these kids are poor and vulnerable to horrible judgment in an unforgiving environment where the fork in the road arrives around the same time as puberty. Pretending that any young, poor, basketball star should choose the "hard right" over the "easy wrong" is a fucking joke. Try asking a 14 year-old to choose "perpetual chaos and dysfunction" over "clothes and food and a bed". 

Maybe Curtis Malone had ulterior motives, but he's also the coach and father figure who provided a stable foundation to return to as Beasley got kicked out of high school after high school.

And you know, maybe he didn't have ulterior motives.

Maybe this is how the game is played. Against a backdrop where everything costs money and nobody has any, the agent that's ready to help doesn't look quite so evil, regardless of what he wants in return. Maybe the wolves are who kept Beasley from getting slaughtered.

For those people and places where "basketball is life", life happens in three-dimensions. Not all AAU coaches follow the rules and no handout comes for free, but those handouts and coaches still save people like Beasley. It's not so much a deal with the devil as embracing the lesser of myriad evils. And if it were someone else blowing the whistle on all this, that's where the conversation would end. It's not particularly rare to see situations like this, and easy to see why it happens. 

But since it's Beasley bringing it to the forefront, entirely for the sake of winning a lawsuit, it's all harder to stomach. This story's not about the complexity of the hoops underworld, but the sad simplicity of a guy who can't stop lighting his dignity on fire.

Among the best teenage basketball players in the world, the odds of making it to the NBA aren't necessarily the same as playing the lottery, but it's still essentially a crapshoot. Back when players went pro straight from high school, for every Kevin Garnett there was a Korleone Young. For every LeBron, a Ndudi Ebi. For every Tyson Chandler , there's a DeAngelo Collins.

So which side of the coin would Michael Beasley have fallen on? Where do you draft a 6'8 tweener with average athleticism who got himself kicked out of five high schools? If he struggled to stay on track as a no. 2 pick shoehorned into the starting lineup with an entire franchise dedicated to watching his every move, how would he have fared as an afterthought second round pick at the end of the bench?

Anyone who claims Beasley's a victim of a broken system conveniently forgets that were it not for the system we have—AAU basketball, college hoops, the NBA age limit—Beasley's career would have ended in disaster before he ever cashed a check from Adidas or the NBA. Those systems and traditions have their own problems, but if you're looking for someone to personify what's wrong, Beasley's not your guy.