The offseason is on with our first big trade. The Washington Wizard’s own Bradley Beal is headlining the exchange and heading to the Pheonix Suns to start his 12th season. After we let Woj and Bobby Marks explain the details, we’ll walk through the W-L spectrum flowing from the biggest winners and then heading downward.
Biggest Winner: Bradley Beal
Soon-to-be stars and star players alike should take notes on Beal’s total finessing of the Wizards franchise. He stayed cool and calm as the Wizards failed to build a solid team around him and didn’t jump the gun by demanding a trade too early. When contract extension time came around, he stepped to the mound with a cross Walter Johnson/Professor Xavior-level pitch. Not only did he back up the Brink’s truck (5 years for $251,019,650), but he also topped it off with a no-trade clause. He got all his money and full control of where, when, and if he would be traded.
It cannot be overstated how much of a Diddy, Money Mayweather, Suge Knight-type power move this no-trade clause was for Beal. He was the only player with a current no-trade clause and one of ten to ever have it. The list of the other nine players are all Hall of Fame, season and finals MVPs, and top 15 all-time players, which needless to say, Beal does not belong on. Did he earn the Lebron/Kobe treatment? Absolutely not, but he aimed for the moon and stuffed all the stars in his bag anyway. NBA players should thank Bradley Beal for showing them what’s possible.
Jordan Goodwin
Goodwin is the second biggest winner of this whole situation. He’ll be leaving the miserable Wizards behind and joining Brink’s Truck Beal on the flight from the DMV to The Valley, during which he can take notes on Beal’s contract negotiation tactics. This upcoming season will be his chance in the spotlight to showcase his defensive skills and be touted as a role-playing glue guy while Kevin Durant, Devin Booker, and Brink’s Truck Beal hold onto all the actual pressure of the Suns needing to succeed.
The Brooklyn Nets franchise
The Nets are not directly involved in this trade at all, but there’s a chance it could positively impact their future. The Nets themselves have shown us that super-teams can be finicky, volatile, and not last long. There’s a possible future where soon-to-be 30-year-old Brink’s Truck Beal and 34-year-old Kevin Durant become too injury prone, the Suns are too capped out to do anything about it, and the team thuds. What would this mean for the Suns’ 2025, ’27, ’28, and ’29 draft picks that the Brooklyn Nets control? The Nets could come out of this decade with some solid young blue chippers thanks to the Suns.
The Phoenix Suns franchise
The Suns are in the dead center of the W-L spectrum. The short-term rewards may neutralize the long-term challenges this trade will bring. All they had to give up for Beal was Chris Paul, who hasn’t played a full season or been healthy for the playoffs since “Somebody that I used to know” and “Call Me Maybe” were at the top of the Billboard charts, along with Landry Shamet who is barely worth mentioning.
The rewards are that Beal is a three-time all-star and a very good player. He has shown he couldn’t be the best player on a winning team in D.C., but now he won’t need to be, and could be an amazing third-best behind Kevin Durant and Devin Booker. On top of being known as one of the best scorers in the league, Zach Harper argues in The Athletic, that Beal is actually an underrated playmaker. He’s averaged 5.5 assists per game over the last four seasons, two of them averaging 6.1 and 6.6 assists. In those years he had the same assist rate as Devin Booker, another underrated playmaker, but with a lower turnover rate. The Suns big three will all be able to shoot threes, play-make, move without the ball, take care of it, not force shots, and be a part of a Warriors-esque flowing improvisational offense.
While Beal has been a below-average defender in recent seasons, it’s been more about effort than capability. Beal will be coming into a team aiming for a championship, and new Suns coach Frank Vogel has shown throughout his coaching career that he can shape up players and team defenses significantly. In the case of the 2020 Championship Lakers, he leveled up Anthony Davis’s defense and made their team defense top three in the league. Coach Vogel is also the reason anyone knows who defensive center Roy Hibbert even is.
The real risks this trade brings are long-term health and flexibility. Brink’s Truck Beal has missed one-third of his games due to injury in the last four seasons and missed one-fifth of his whole career’s games. While some of them could have been in fact the Wizards trying to tank, considering the money Beal is making over the next four (ages 30-33) seasons, there’s a potential for this to end up being one of the worst contracts in the league in 2027.
The financial commitment to Durant, Booker, and Beal puts the Suns into the now infamous “second apron” of the new CBA. Starting in the 2024-25 season, the big three will all be making over $50 million. As Bobby Marks so bleakly explains, this second apron will restrict the Suns in all sorts of ways. Starting in the 2024-25 season, they won’t be able to aggregate salaries for a trade (meaning they would not be able to package Deandre Ayton and Cameron Payne to match an incoming player’s salary), acquire players in a sign and trade, use a trade exception, sign buy-out players during the season, or offer tax mid-level contracts. Not having control over any of their own draft picks until 2030 doesn’t help either. The only way they’ll be able to improve their team is through cheap free agents in this and the coming offseasons. As was joked about many, many, many times on social media, finding quality role players could prove to be a challenge now and even more of a struggle down the road.
Biggest Loser: The Washington Wizards franchise and its fans
The Wizards are on our loser’s side of the spectrum where they belong. Along with their lame cherry blossom jerseys, they dragged Wiz fans through what Zach Lowe dubs “the era of mediocrity” with the Wizards spending so many years middling on the treadmill. They did not fully commit to tanking, which could have gotten them high draft picks and they did not make the moves to push them even into the top half of the conference. In the last five seasons, they have not won more than 35 games, winning as low as 25 in 2019-20. They have made the playoffs in only three of the last six seasons and made it past the first round in only one. Their goal was simply to consistently make the playoffs and they couldn’t even do that.
This is what it looks like when a team waits too long to tank. They clearly should have traded Beal and began the tank sometime between 2018-20, right as Beal was leading the league in scoring and his value was at its peak. To make matters worse, they gave Brink’s Truck Beal a no-trade clause, confining his trade market to whichever teams he wanted to approve a trade to. Now, the team begins the tank with a bunch of Suns second-rounders they got for their all-star player, and borderline all-star Kyle Kuzma about to walk for nothing in return.
The glimmers of hope are distant for the Wizards. What might make them slightly smaller losers is if they get a decent return for Chris Paul. The new President of Basketball Operations, Michael Winger, is well respected around the league, has experience with rebuilds, and the autonomy to now drag Wizards fans through a rebuilding phase. They could come out the other side in two to three seasons with some promising assets, but it will be a gauntlet of losing during that span.
Too early to tell:
Chris Paul: Chris Haynes is reporting the Wizards will be sending Paul to co-command the injury brigade with Kawhi Leonard and Pandemic P. On the plus side, he’ll get to live in Los Angeles again, on the downside he’ll never ever win a championship.
Miami Heat: The Heat were rumored to be bidding for Bradley Beal but they either weren’t willing to concede enough in a trade package or couldn’t win Brink’s Truck Beal’s favor. Reportedly, the Heat prefer Damian Lillard and Jimmy Butler is already recruiting him. If the Heat end up with Lillard, their risk could pay off.
PLANET FOMO 