The Bradley Beal saga has been covered in many ways by local reporters and local insiders, but what about the national perspective? To get that Ben Standig (in for Craig Hoffman) spoke with former NBA front office executive with the Phoenix Suns and Meadowlark Media's basketball expert Amin Elhassan to get a broad picture of what happens with the Wizards next.
"You're not doing anything without him being on board, basically," Elhassan said about Beal's no-trade clause and how that impacts what the Wizards can get in return. "So any reimagining of this roster – which I agree is probably the best thing to do – starts with 'Brad, where would you wanna go?' Because I don't know if you can come to him with 'Hey Brad, we wanna send you to Houston.' I don't know if that works. Or Detroit or somewhere like that where the prospects of success are very far in the future... then you look at the roster. And the Wizards are one of those weird teams that have a bunch of good players that people would want, but the combination of said players aren't exactly conducive to winning."
For Elhassan, the Wizards have some trade chips in Monte Morris and the possibility of getting sign-and-trades worked out with Kyle Kuzma and Kristaps Porzingis so they can fully start the re-build process rather than breaking the bank for similar players and being a 41-win team.
The notion of changing things up drastically is something that new Wizards team president Michael Winger hinted at in a conversation with Team 980 last week: "To put it bluntly, the team as constituted hasn't performed. Hasn't performed up to the level that they themselves probably wanted to perform. And running it back as constituted doesn't seem like a very wise pursuit. And, so, sometimes making that change accelerates that progress."
So what about the return for Beal? Some factors to consider before getting into what comes back in a trade: Beal is about to turn 30, has missed considerable time over the last four seasons due to injuries, has $200 million on his contract over the next four seasons, and, "most importantly," Elhassan added, "when we look at when he was on the court the last couple of seasons, he's kinda been overextended."
Elhassan added that Beal with the Wizards and the surrounding talent has shown "he's not really good enough to be a No. 1 guy. He's much more suited being a complimentary type star player."
So the Wizards have to thread this trade needle: Send Beal to a) a team that he wants to go to b) a team that already has a pretty good start player – or players, cause he can't be a team's "lead banana" – c) a team that's going to be willing to "bite the bullet on a hefty salary for the next four years and d) a team willing to take the risk of him getting hurt, Elhassan said.
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"So when you do all that it really shrinks the market and it turns the proposition from 'hey what kind of platter of assets can I get for this guy, who as you said, is an All-Star caliber player, to 'how do I get out of this relatively unscathed?'" Elhassan said. "And when you're talking about that you're saying 'Can I get a decent young player and some picks?' Are those picks first-round picks? Are they second-round picks? Do I just move him for picks and don't even worry about the talent and get some salary cap relief in that regard? Or there is a universe where you get some good players for him, but you're the one that's giving up the picks because [Beal] is the liability in the sense of his availability and his contract."
Where will Beal end up? The Miami Heat are "the right amount of desperate in terms of all those different factors," Elhassan said. They are starving for offense, but Miami could choose to go after Damian Lillard, who is older but better than Beal.
The Wizards are "boxed in" with this because Beal could dictate that he only wants to go to a certain team and then figure out how to make the best of the situation. "The no-trade clause," Elhassan said. "In essence becomes this thing where you can only send Bradley Beal specifically where he wants to go. Instead of protecting him from going to undesirable locations, it allows him to hyperfocus to one or two locations. And now [the Wizards] are handcuffed to 'now I gotta negotiate against these guys' and you can't turn to go to another third party."
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