Houston Rockets’ Patrick Beverley to bow out of All-Star Skills Competition

Patrick Beverley will not defend his All-Star Skills Competition Title due to injury.

It’s been a brutal day in H-Town what with the team reeling from a third consecutive loss, falling out of their seventh seed in the West into ninth and rumors the team is shopping Dwight Howard.

Now as all teams and players prepare for the All-Star break news comes via Yahoo’s Adrian Wojnarowski that Patrick Beverley will not return to participate in defending his title.

Beverley hurt his ankle last night in the Houston Rockets second straight loss in 5 days to the Portland Trail Blazers.

As per Woj, Beverley is focused on getting healthy and rested over the All-Star break and gearing up for the teams efforts to improve upon last seasons Western Conference Finals appearance.

Beverley wants to rest the ankle over the All-Star break for the Rockets’ final push to make the Western Conference playoffs.

That statement is odd given the Rockets find themselves outside the playoff picture now given their 0 for 3 week and 5 losses in their past 7 games which plummeted them outside the playoff seeds.

This season Beverley began the year coming off the bench prior to replacing Ty Lawson (who never gelled with James Harden in and the starters) back in the starting line-up.  It was felt his energy would help to correct the issues the team was suffering specifically on the defensive end and that he meshed better playing beside James Harden who tends to orchestrate all ball duties when on the court.

While he’s had some games contributing from behind the arc and guarding the best opposing player in the back court his 8.9 points, 3.0 rebounds, 2.9 assists and 1.7 made three points (while shooting 40.3% from deep) have not been enough to counter most opposing backcourts. In fact his defensive stats are underwhelming as he sports a minus -1.0 defensive box score per 100 possessions as per basketball reference.

Now it will be up to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver to replace Beverley with someone to compete in the Skills Competition which this season has been altered to have guards and big men compete. From a selfish stand point I’m hoping the commish will look at adding a home grown product in Cory Joseph who not only plays for the host city Raptors team, but also grew up in Toronto. Edited to add: Emmanuel Mudiay is Beverley’s replacement.

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