A funny thing happened during the Suns’ loss to the Thunder in Phoenix on Monday, and it wasn’t anything new if you’ve been following the career of Michael Beasley relatively closely.

Beasley has had his ups and downs in his first year in Phoenix — mostly downs, if we’re being honest — but has contributed over his last two games when he was once again given the opportunity to do so. He made 10 of his 14 shot attempts in 20 minutes of playing time during a win over the Bulls in Chicago, and showed flashes of success, both offensively and defensively, in Tuesday’s game against the league’s best team from Oklahoma City.

A couple of Beasley’s free throw attempts, however, were off by a fairly severe margin — so much so that it caused Beasley to walk towards the rim between attempts to get a closer look to see what was the matter.

From Jonathan Dalton of NBA.com:

Suns forward Michael Beasley, after missing two of his first free-throw attempts off the side of the rim, walked down the lane, stared up at the iron and shook his head. “I had to scare the gremlins away,” he said. “Those gremlins are always messing with me.”

As we mentioned at the outset, the gremlins and Beasley have a bit of a history (via A Wolf Among Wolves from 2010):

Did you see Beasley walk forward after missing a free throw in each of the team’s first preseason games, tilt his head and glare at the rim? Well, here’s the story: “That’s a college job,” said Beasley, who played one season at Kansas State. “Luis Colon was my college center. He’s a big Spanish guy and when big Spanish guys get mad, they start speaking Spanish real fast. Every time he missed, he’d look at the rim and curse the rim out. So every time I miss, I’m trying to get the gremlin off the top of the rim.”

It appears those gremlins stay with Beasley, no matter his destination.

Beasley’s erratic play has found him in and out of the Suns rotations at various times this season, so there hasn’t been a lot of opportunity (or reason) to converse with him about the game’s events. We’ll have to make a point of tracking him down in the future regardless of the circumstances, since his perspective on things seems to be much more interesting than that of the majority of guys we end up speaking with.