Last week, new Wizards GM Will Dawkins said he was ‘happy to have’ Bradley Beal, but ‘staying in mediocrity is not the goal, and we have the authority to do what we need to do to be successful.’
The latter likely means the former is going to be traded, and on Wednesday, it was reported that the team and Beal will work together to find a trade – and Grant Paulsen, for one, wonders why the Wizards just won’t commit to a full rebuild publicly.
“Why keep your options open here? Why say to someone you still don’t know if you’re going to do this?” Grant asked. “To me, the report is Beal is willing to be traded, and if they go to him and tell him the team is going to be bad, he will want to go somewhere else and win. I’d take this report as they’re moving forward rebuilding, and they’re clothes-pinning the message to the bird and telling other teams we’re doing this.”
So, Grant has two reasons why he thinks they may not just come out and say ‘we’re trading Beal.’
“Number one is they probably have more work to do still in terms of talking to players and agents, so you don’t want it out there publicly. There’s only so many hours in a day, so you can’t find out, if you are player number nine on the roster, that they’re blowing it up in a report by The Athletic,” Grant said. “And the other reason is that maybe you don’t know you can get 85 cents on the dollar yet; if your best offer is terrible, you don’t want to take that. Your point is you’d like to trade him, but you can’t commit to that all-in and give away Brad Beal to now help yourself long-term. The goal has to be get out of the contract and get picks or young players, too – have your cake and eat it, too.”
Danny thought that was well said, and cited the deals to get both Gilbert Arenas and John Wall out of DC as examples that it’s not always that simple, which is why you leave the door open.
“If you go back to the two times in recent history the Wizards traded an untradeable contract, they didn’t get great hauls, but they got out of a year or two of a bad deal,” Danny said. “You’re probably going to have to do the same thing here – so if it’s Miami, you might end up with Kyle Lowry’s expiring deal and maybe Victor Oladipo, who won’t play. That’s not a great haul, but it may just be you have less time with bad money. If the deals that come back to you are so unpalatable, then you have to have the option open to say you’re going to rebuild around Beal. This gives them an out, and everything that has happened so far has happened the way it should. They’re working to trade him, but they have to leave the door open so they can say no to wherever he wants to say no to, or if the deal isn’t advantageous.”
Follow Grant & Danny on Twitter: @granthpaulsen & @funnydanny
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