Malik Beasley facing complaint from former agency amid gambling investigation

New York Times

4 days ago

By Mike Vorkunov, Jon Krawczynski and James Edwards III
On the day Malik Beasley helped the Detroit Pistons shock the New York Knicks to win Game 2 of their first-round series, he also learned about the latest legal issue in his life. A process server found him at the Ritz-Carlton in downtown Manhattan and hand-delivered a lawsuit from his former agency, Hazan Sports, which claimed Beasley had breached a marketing deal with the company and fired it as his representation two months earlier. Hazan Sports had sued him for more than $2.5 million in response.
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Lawsuits and liens have trailed Beasley since he entered the league in 2016, and he has drawn concerns from at least one team about his off-court life. Now, he faces even more scrutiny. Beasley is a person of interest in a gambling investigation out of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York, his attorney, Steve Haney, confirmed to The Athletic over the weekend. No charges or formal allegations have been filed against him.
'This is simply an investigation,' Haney said. 'At this point, Malik has not been charged with any crime and there has been no formal accusation of wrongdoing. Hopefully, everyone will afford him that same presumption of innocence that everyone else deserves.'
The investigation into Beasley came at what should have been a moment of triumph for him. After playing for five teams over his last four seasons, he was set to cash in this month following a strong campaign with the Detroit Pistons, where he averaged 16.3 points per game and made a career-high 41.6 percent of his 3s. The Pistons had been in talks with Beasley and his agent leading up to June 30's official start of free agency, and were prepared to offer him a three-year, $42 million contract that included a team option for the last year, according to two sources briefed on the negotiations.
But the NBA reached out to the club several days before free agency began and let it know about the federal investigation involving Beasley. The Pistons quickly pivoted away and are now unlikely to sign him. A league spokesman did not respond to a question about whether the NBA had also investigated Beasley. The NBA has previously said it is cooperating with the federal investigation.
The contract would have been a windfall, although Beasley has already made nearly $60 million over his nine seasons in the NBA, including $6 million with Detroit this past season. But he has a line of creditors who have taken to courts to try to recoup the money they believe they were owed. He has been sued at least five times over the last eight years, according to available public records, and has more than a dozen different liens filed against him. The Detroit News previously reported on some of the lawsuits and liens.
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Hazan Sports sued him to recover the $625,000 it said it paid him in November 2023, when Beasley signed on as a client.
In 2018, he was sued for $1,990 in past due rent. In 2021, he was sued for $2,000 for not paying homeowners association fees for a home he owned in Georgia.
Beasley was sued last September in Milwaukee civil court by a dental company for $34,389.70 and for $26,826.76 by a barber. He played the 2023-24 season for the Milwaukee Bucks. Both cases appear to have been resolved after a default judgement against him in January, according to court records, with Beasley paying both in full.
Those lawsuits were just some of the off-court issues Beasley faced even before he arrived in Minnesota.
In September 2020, before his first training camp with the Timberwolves following being traded by the Denver Nuggets, Beasley was arrested in suburban Minneapolis after pointing a gun at a family that parked their car outside his house while on a tour of homes in the neighborhood. When police arrived to arrest him, they found marijuana in his home. Beasley was charged with marijuana possession and making threats of violence.
Despite the serious, unresolved legal issues, Beasley signed a four-year, $60 million contract extension with the Wolves in November 2020.
There were concerns inside the organization, a source who worked for the team at the time told The Athletic, about what that kind of wealth would mean for a player who, they believed, had a volatile life off the court. Gersson Rosas, the then president of basketball operations, felt that the Wolves could provide Beasley with the support and stability to help him work through his issues, team sources said. Beasley had a 1-year-old son at the time, and there were hopes that Beasley would mature with the show of faith from the organization.
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'We want to understand what's going on, and we want Malik to be not only the best player but the best person he can be,' Rosas said at the time. 'And we're all working through this together.'
Beasley eventually pleaded guilty to threats of violence. The drug charges were dropped and he had to spend much of the summer of 2021 in the Hennepin County Workhouse as punishment.
He was traded to Utah the next summer as part of a deal for Rudy Gobert, but the Wolves also continued to have reservations about trusting him to keep his life off the court on the straight and narrow, a team source said.
The pattern of legal concerns for Beasley, both significant and small, unfortunately continued.
When he signed a contract with Aliya Capital Partners to borrow money from its sports finance fund in August 2024, he pledged his current and future NBA contracts, as well as the money he would make as part of the NBA and NBPA's group licensing deal with NBA2K, among his pieces of collateral, according to a financing statement form filed in Florida.
That was not the first time Beasley seems to have put himself in debt. According to a filing with the California Secretary of State, a June 2023 financing agreement with the Aliya Sports Finance Fund gave the company a 'second position lien on all of Debtor's future interest in the National Basketball Association or any other professional basketball league, Uniform Player Contract between Malik Beasley and Minnesota Timberwolves Basketball Limited Partnership or any other club following the current contract signed with the Minnesota Timberwolves Basketball Limited Partnership on November 25th, 2020.'
In 2021, Beasley had taken on a $4.53 million loan with South River Capital that charged him 12 percent interest per year on the amount and a 10 percent late charge on the amount due if he did not pay on time, according to a copy of the promissory note obtained by The Athletic. Eleven months later, South River Capital filed a lawsuit in a Baltimore County court to recoup the money and asked for another $1.3 million in attorney's fees, late fees and interest payments. The court ruled Beasley owed South River Capital that amount. The company then sued him in a Minnesota county court, while he was still with the Minnesota Timberwolves, to try to retrieve its payment. Beasley, according to a court filing, paid $1.13 million of it in 2023.The next year, the prior judgement was vacated following a request by South River Capital 'per agreement of the parties.'
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Aliya Capital Partners and South River Capital did not respond to emails for this story.
Beasley is currently being sued for $7,355 by the owners of an apartment building in downtown Detroit. The suit was filed last month after a previous lawsuit for $14,150 was dropped in March. It is set for a hearing later this month.
Hazan Sports' lawsuit against Beasley is also now in flux. A lawyer for the agency told a federal judge last month that he was holding off on filing for default judgment because the agents and Beasley were now in negotiations, but needed to get through the NBA's offseason.
'The timing of when a settlement can be executed amongst the parties is predicated upon the defendant's financial liquidity,' the lawyer wrote in a letter to the judge. 'Which is directly related to the commencement of the National Basketball Association's free agency period which does not begin until July 6th.'