An un-Beal-lievable end

Bradley Beal goes to Phoenix for less than a song. (What's the song's cap number?)

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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After the Dance; John William Waterhouse; 1876

According to reports, the Washington Wizards have agreed to a deal to send Bradley Beal to the Phoenix Suns in exchange for Chris Paul, Landry Shamet, some second round picks and a pick swap. The deal isn’t final because the Wizards are reportedly trying to find a new home for CP3 before buying him out; it seems like the franchise is respecting his wish to contend for a title in 2023-24, which the Wizards will not be doing anytime soon.

This is obviously a horrifying deal for the Wizards. Horrifying. Beal was third team All-NBA two years ago, and fell just short of that honor the prior two seasons (2018-19 and 2019-20). His performance and availability have slipped since, while his compensation has grown. But he’s still somewhere in the neighborhood of a top-25 to top-30 (okay, maybe top-35 or top-40) player, so a salary dump with no outright first-round picks or blue chip prospects being included is a nightmare for the Wizards.

David Aldridge of The Athletic frames the move as a necessary evil with respect to Beal’s no-trade clause. My qualm is with the speed of it. Before the deal was reported, Marc Stein made the case for Washington to move fast because the specter of Damian Lillard becoming available looms, and that could take one of Beal’s two apparent options — Miami — off the table for the Wizards. But it sounds like the mere specter of Dame Time held the Heat back anyway; Miami beat writer Barry Jackson reported that the Wizards never received an offer from the Heat they liked more the Suns offer. So the Wizards were already competing against the Blazers, who aren’t even theoretically shopping Lillard yet.

From my vantage point, the Wizards are in desperate need of a change overall, and moving on from Beal is a part of that. But the season doesn’t start for four months. In the grand scheme, there should have been no urgency to act even before the NBA Draft, where lots of opportunities tend to float around. The urgency factor here apparently comes from CP3’s contract situation; he has a guarantee date coming up fast, and if Beal was set on Phoenix as one of two trade options, it was basically now or never with this incarnation of the Suns deal. Otherwise, the Suns would have needed to trade Paul or waived him for contract purposes.

Reliably, teams have disappointing free agency period starts and get desperate to add talent in the trade market. Or similarly, things will go wrong in free agency for teams and they’ll decide in mid-July to pivot and retool. In any case, new offers and newly available talents become available. Why not wait if you’re the Wizards? What’s the cost?

The only answer there is that Beal has that damned no-trade clause, and if he said he wouldn’t waive it except for the Suns or Heat, and if the Suns waived CP3 giving them no structural way to trade for Beal without including Deandre Ayton, and if the Heat traded for Lillard instead of Beal, then maybe, if the team can’t convince him otherwise, Beal stubbornly sticks with a 37ish-win team for yet another season.

Is that worse than this trade?

Maybe.

In any case, the lesson here is that WE DON’T HAND OUT NO-TRADE CLAUSES ANY MORE. That can mess you up in ways even a bloated $250 million contract cannot.