By Andy Kamenetzky

The key to motivating people varies on a case-by-case basis, and often can be difficult to discover.

For example, I would have been generously described in high school as a disinterested student. Save for English classes, I wasn’t naturally drawn to academics, and wasn’t shy about making this nakedly obvious. As a means of challenging me, my teachers used to regularly say, “I can tell you rarely study and you’re still getting Bs and Cs. With a little bit of effort, I know you’re smart enough to ace my class.” My mental response was always, “Well, I happen to agree, so I don’t see any reason to bust my ass proving it when I could instead use that time watching TV and drinking insane amounts of beer.”

Reverse psychology, however, would have done the trick. Had my teachers feigned shock my grades were even that good because I always struck them as a moron, I would have hit the books and gotten As just to spite them. That’s just how I’m wired, and this should have been pretty obvious for anybody who knew my personality, but nobody figured it out. As a result, I continued to coast.

All which is to say, if Adrian Wojnarowski’s report about Michael Beasley working out for the San Antonio Spurs represents any serious consideration by the franchise, we could be staring down a ridiculously fascinating psychology experiment: The stunningly perfect franchise meets the stunningly imperfect player.

Just think. Instead of the NBA Finals, this could happen every day in practice! (AP)

On paper, the Spurs are the ideal franchise to turn Beasley’s career around. The right culture with the right roster and most importantly, the right coach. There’s seemingly no player on the planet Gregg Popovich can’t reach. And this makes Beasley the ultimate test case, because thus far no coach has been capable of reaching him. Rick Adelman and Alvin Gentry, both known as “players coaches,” failed. Ditto Pat Riley, Erik Spoelstra, and assistant coach LeBron. Clearly, Beasley’s isn’t the easiest skull to penetrate, and this poses a challenge even to someone as persuasive as Pop.

But even if he can make that connection, there’s still the question of how good a player Beasley actually is. As of now, Beasley remains mere potential, and potential increasingly hard to quantify at that. He is a name, the concept of a good player, rather than an fully actualized one. Six seasons into a career, he’s established himself as a periodically explosive scorer. Beyond that, there’s nothing you can really point to as a fully realized skill set, which explains in part why, despite career-best shooting percentages, and despite Miami’s desperate need for bench scorers not named “Ray” or “Jesus S.,” Beasley couldn’t gain Spo’s trust.

Plus, how badly Beasley actually cares about being a legit NBA player remains an open question. San Antonio could represent his last chance, but has the guy even exhibited concern about washing out? Dude has made eight figures screwing around. What exactly would drive home the danger? On just about every count imaginable, Beasley is the mother of all fixer-uppers. He is a nut (pun intended) that seemingly can’t be cracked, and it would appear most teams have given up trying.

Were Pop able to transform Beasley into a legit presence on a contending team, this wouldn’t just make him the greatest motivator and coach in league history. He would become known as perhaps the greatest transformer of anything in the history of everything. Seriously. This would be the equivalent of a director who transitions Tara Reid from Sharknado to her Oscar speech. Or the music producer who successfully reinvents Justin Bieber as the next Springsteen. The Comedy Central exec lauded for following his gut when it told him to blow out Jon Stewart because Carrot Top is the one man capable of taking The Daily Show to a smarter, more politically incisive place.

Yeah. It would be that impressive.