PRE-DRAFT DEALS
June 18: Suns land Bradley Beal to form Big Three in Phoenix
Phoenix Suns get:
Bradley Beal
Washington Wizards get:
Chris Paul
Landry Shamet
Multiple second-round picks
Multiple pick swaps
Suns: D
Will adding Beal help the Suns even things up with the defending champion Denver Nuggets after losing to them in the 2023 conference semifinals?
After years of speculation about Beal's possible departure from the Wizards, a deal came together swiftly in the days after ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reported Wednesday that the Wizards' front office would work together with Beal and his agent to find a new home for the longtime Washington All-Star.
So what kind of player is Beal at this stage of his career, two years removed from averaging 31.3 PPG and battling Stephen Curry for the scoring title until the last day of the season? Since then, Beal hasn't even so much as made the All-Star team, averaging 23.2 PPG while playing a combined 90 games.
The encouraging news is that Beal was about as efficient as ever last season, posting a .593 true shooting percentage that matched his mark from 2020-21. Unlike 2021-22, when Beal shot a career-low 30% from 3-point range, last year's scoring drop was a function of playing fewer minutes (33.5, his fewest since overcoming stress injuries in his right lower leg that limited his availability early in his career) and a 29% usage rate that was Beal's lowest since 2018-19.
Playing alongside Devin Booker and Kevin Durant, Beal won't need to maintain the massive usage rates -- in the 34% range -- he posted in 2019-20 and 2020-21, the highest-scoring seasons of his career. And compared with many high-scoring stars, Beal is better positioned to maintain his value without the ball in his hands as frequently.
According to data from NBA Advanced Stats, Beal posted a 52% effective field goal percentage on shots with at least two seconds of touch time beforehand, which can broadly be thought of as self-created attempts. That jumped to 61% on attempts with less touch time than two seconds.
Relative to the average NBA player, Beal's ability to create his own shot is more impressive. (League average eFG% was 50% on self-created shots and 59% on all other attempts.) But in an absolute sense, moving to a situation where more of his shots are created by others will make Beal more efficient. That ratio had probably skewed too far toward self-creation in Washington, where 68% of Beal's shots were self-created.
In particular, the biggest shift in Beal's game has been the percentage of his 3-point attempts coming off the dribble. Playing with John Wall early in his career, Beal feasted on a steady diet of catch-and-shoot 3s, peaking at 395 such attempts in 2016-17 at a 41.5% clip according to Second Spectrum tracking. Those represented 71% of Beal's total 3-pointers. Last season, per Second Spectrum, barely half of Beal's 3-point tries were catch-and-shoots.
After a dreadful 2020-21 performance on catch-and-shoot 3s (29%, his lowest in the tracking era, which dates back to Beal's second NBA season), he bounced back to hit 40% last season, according to Second Spectrum tracking. That skill, including Beal's ability to be a threat coming off screens, is why teams have long coveted him as a complementary star.
The challenge of fitting Beal in is that he's being paid like a top-tier superstar rather than a complementary one. Based on the current projection for the 2023-24 salary cap, Beal's salary will come in as the NBA's fifth-largest, trailing only Curry and three players who will make next season's max on extensions that kick in (Joel Embiid, LeBron James and Nikola Jokic).
That salary has been an impediment for the Wizards building a winner around Beal, and although Phoenix doesn't have to worry about adding star talent, filling out the rest of the roster will be a challenge.
Worse yet, Beal is early in the five-year contract he signed with Washington less than a year ago. His salary increases to $57 million in 2026-27 (a player option), when Beal will be 33. An escalating salary cap will likely grow faster than Beal's contract, but not enough to offset age-related decline. That's why the return the Wizards got in terms of picks and players isn't commensurate with Beal's reputation as a player.
More so than whether Beal was the right star to pursue to go with Booker and Durant, the question for the Suns is whether adding a star was the right move as opposed to trying to use Paul's contract to beef up their depth with multiple contributors.
In Booker and Durant, Phoenix already has two of the league's best individual scorers. Yes, we saw against the Nuggets how a committed, effective defense could slow down Durant, who averaged 29.5 PPG in the series but shot just 45% from the field and 22% from 3-point range.
Still, the Suns' larger issue was their lack of two-way role players, which forced them to tilt heavily toward weaker defenders to space the floor well enough for Booker and Durant to operate -- allowing Denver to feast offensively.
Beal can be that kind of player. When motivated, he's been a quality individual defender on the perimeter. Still, his addition makes Phoenix small on the wing with a pair of natural shooting guards listed at 6-foot-4 (Beal) and 6-5 (Booker) -- unless the Suns plan to use Booker at point guard, taxing him with more offensive responsibilities but putting more size on the court.
Moreover, Phoenix again traded multiple contributors for a single player. The quartet of Beal, Booker, Durant and center Deandre Ayton will combine to make $163 million in 2023-24, enough to already put the Suns into the luxury tax without signing even a fifth player to make a full lineup.
As a result, without an Ayton trade, the Suns assuredly won't have access to their taxpayer midlevel exception because of incoming rules restricting teams that exceed the second luxury tax apron. Phoenix could still re-sign its own free agents, most notably forward Torrey Craig, but any outside additions to the roster will likely be limited to players making the veteran's minimum.
There's a path to the Suns filling out the roster by taking advantage of veterans' desire to pursue a championship in an attractive, warm-weather market. But we don't have to look back further than the 2021-22 Los Angeles Lakers to see the potential pitfalls in trying to build a roster this way.
Given how much time all three of Phoenix's All-Stars have missed to injury -- they combined to play 61% of possible games last season -- it's plausible the Suns could find themselves battling just to avoid the play-in next spring.
Games Played Past Two NBA Seasons
PLAYER 2021-22 2022-23
Bradley Beal 40 50
Devin Booker 68 53
Kevin Durant 55 47
Total 163 150
The problem will only get worse in future seasons, when Phoenix will be limited by the second apron in terms of adding through the draft and free agency while Beal and Durant (35 by the start of next season) age. Perhaps a satisfying Ayton trade will emerge that both enhances the Suns' depth and takes them out of second-apron purgatory, but that's an enormous risk to willingly take -- using much of Phoenix's minuscule remaining draft capital in the process.
The Durant trade seemed like a reasonable gamble to take at the time, given its championship upside. Adding Beal to the mix after an early playoff exit, by contrast, feels more like doubling down on a hand that was already losing.
Wizards: B-
The urgency for the Wizards to make a move now, while Beal was inclined to waive his no-trade clause, is clear. Washington let Beal go for less than what it could have dreamed of getting a few years ago so it could avoid his trade value dropping further over time as he ages and teams reckon with the impact of the second tax apron.
Already, the market for Beal seems to have been impacted by the possibility of Damian Lillard coming available later this summer, depending on what the Portland Trail Blazers do with the No. 3 pick. That might have limited how far the Miami Heat were willing to go in pursuit of Beal. As a result, Washington came out of this trade without a single first-round pick, although swaps in the distant future could have value if the Suns implode due to age.
The biggest question here, then, is whether the Wizards would have been better off waiting to see if the Blazers can swing a deal for a veteran who might have ensured Lillard's happiness with Portland's roster. In that scenario, Washington might have been able to leverage a deal heavier on draft picks out of Miami.
It will be interesting to see how the Wizards handle Paul. The bulk of Paul's $30.8 million salary for 2023-24, previously $15.8 million guaranteed, must become guaranteed for salary-matching purposes. (He'll bump up to $28.4 million guaranteed, per ESPN's Bobby Marks.) If Kristaps Porzingis exercises his $36 million player option, Washington won't have cap space this year, meaning a Paul buyout doesn't carry much benefit. The team would surely instead prefer to flip Paul elsewhere for a similar salary and modest draft compensation.
As for Shamet, despite having three years left on the extension he signed ahead of the 2021-22 season, he's functionally an expiring contract. Shamet's 2024-25 and 2025-26 salaries are non-guaranteed, meaning the Wizards can come out of this trade without any salary on their books beyond next season.
Depending how Washington handles Porzingis and Kyle Kuzma -- with the latter all but certain to decline a $13 million player option in favor of free agency -- it's possible Daniel Gafford's $13.4 million salary will be the largest for the Wizards in 2024-25. That will give Washington the ability to use cap space next summer to take on unwanted contracts from other teams in exchange for draft compensation.
Perhaps the most important thing the Wizards get out of this deal is clarity about the team's direction. After years of trying to make the playoffs with little upside beyond losing in the first round, Washington has finally acknowledged reality with the arrival of a new front office led by team president Michael Winger.
Rebuilding offers no guarantees for the Wizards, but it allows them to aspire for something more than 45 wins and a competitive first-round exit.
― symsymsym, Sunday, 18 June 2023 23:39 (ten months ago) link