Beal Chops

So I was conferring the other day with friend and fellow Gator alum Ted "P. Norris" Gibson about my previous post, "Epic Beal Time" when he brought some rather interesting facts to my attention.  I thought that they needed to be shared with my readers.

Despite his selection atop the draft, Beal was met with much scrutiny by scouts, teams, and pundits of the NBA for lacking the maturity expected of a player considered among the best in the draft.  If you look at his numbers over the course of his freshman campaign, they really aren't anything special. In 37 games for the Gators, Beal averaged 14.8 points, 6.7 rebounds and 2.2 assists.  Aside from a few big games (including the one mentioned in my previous post against Marquette), Beal would seem like a pretty mediocre player to the untrained eye.  But to all of those pundits claiming that Beal "only turned it on during the tournament," I wish to call one thing to your attention that was clearly ignored: Beal was playing out of position the entire season.

That's right.  Beal had gathered many accolades during his high school career at Chaminade, including National Player of the Year as a shooting guard, but after being recruited by Florida, a team that already had a proven shooting guard in Junior Kenny Boynton, Beal had to switch roles in order to get maximum playing time.  Boynton, also a top recruit a few years earlier, was an essential part of a Gator team that made it to the Elite Eight a year before Beal's arrival and there was no way he was going to relinquish his role.

A one time Florida football coach (who for the purposes of this blog shall remain unnamed) once said that in order to succeed, a team needs to get the ball into the hands of their play makers by any means necessary.  I think it's safe to say that Coach Billy Donovan did exactly that by moving Beal from an appropriately sized shooting guard to an undersized small forward.  Now, for those of you who have played basketball before, you know their are some significant differences between these two positions, and moving Brad closer to the rim surely took him out of his comfort zone.  Add this to the pressures of being a highly touted rookie, and you are bound to hit some bumps in the road, and his numbers reflected that.

It took Beal the bulk of the regular season to adjust to his new role, but by the end, he embraced it and was able to be a difference maker for a team with National Championship aspirations.  The fact that he ended up going through an experience like this shouldn't be looked at negatively, but instead should be considered yet another attribute to an already promising young player.  Being able to adapt to a new role where he lacked size and fundamentals and eventually learning to excell in that role shows that Beal possess versatility unique to NBA rookies.  This adjustment should also help him to better defend different types of players and will make the size adjustment from the NCAA to the NBA easier now that he will go back to playing shooting guard with the Wiz.  Based on this information, I would be surprised if Beal doesn't turn out to be a home-run pick for a Wizards team that's on the rise.