Suitland, Md. native and Minnesota Timberwolves forward Michael Beasley could be in trouble again. Playing in a pickup basketball game against fellow Suitland native and Oklahoma City Thunder All-Star Kevin Durant, Beasley got into a shoving match with a heckling fan.
Click here to see a video of Beasley’s incident on YouTube.
The 22-year-old Beasley had to be restrained by security guards after he walked up to a fan and pushed him in the face, delaying a game at the Dyckman Tournament in Washington Heights, N.Y. for nearly 10 minutes.
Beasley began trading taunts early in the game with a group of hecklers, reportedly shouting, “I get paid for this!” as he was jogging up court. After shoving the fan in the face, Beasley then returned later to shake the fan’s hand and make peace but the incident escalated and security again had to restrain the 6-foot-10-inch, 235-pound power forward. “He just mushed me,” said Garland Quince, the man who Beasley shoved. “He mushed me in my face,” Quince said. “I was arguing about a Kevin Durant call and he just mushed me in my face.”
Quince added: “He put his hands on me, I didn’t touch him. I was just telling him I was a Kevin Durant fan. Kevin Durant is my favorite player.”
Quince, who reportedly stands a foot shorter than Beasley, indicated he will not press charges. A fan at the tournament recorded the shoving incident in a video on his cell phone but the recording allegedly shows someone in Quince’s camp shouting and cursing at Beasley.
“I don’t know what transpired to make that happen,” Dyckman executive director Kenny Stevens said according to nypost.com. “All I know is that if you’re a professional, you have to be a professional all the time. It was a nice, hostile environment for street, summer basketball. That’s what we create here at Dyckman. That’s what we want people to understand. The atmosphere is intense, but it’s friendly.”
Beasley had already endured his share of “incidents” upon entering the NBA in 2008. His latest headline arrived just a month ago when he was ticketed for speeding and marijuana possession while driving along an interstate in a Minneapolis suburb.