Bradley Beal will work with the Washington Wizards to work to find a trade, waiving the All-Star guard's no-trade clause, if the new front office of president Michael Winger and GM Will Dawkins elects to rebuild the team beginning this offseason, according to reports from multiple media outlets.
There has not been a decision from the team on whether to trade Beal, who has just finished the first year of a five-year, $251 million contract extension. But ESPN reported that as other teams begin to contact Washington, Winger and Beal's agent "are staying in close contact to discuss scenarios presented to the franchise."
The Athletic reported the Miami Heat and the Milwaukee Bucks are expected to be "prominent suitors" for Beal if he hits the trade market. And sources told SNY NBA Insider Ian Begley that Beal was one of the high-profile shooting guards the New York Knicks held internal, in-season discussions about as a target for this summer.
In interviews with The Team 980 last week, both Winger and Dawkins did not say if the team would rebuild and said there was no decision made on Beal.
Winger said trading Beal would be a "last resort."
"When you get to a point in time when you in many cases relent to deciding that we cannot win a championship as constituted, the last thing you ever wanna do is trade away a player of that caliber, particularly if he's under contract," Winger told Team 980. "...But ultimately, why something like that happens is you've studied everything there is to study, you've pursued every scenario there is to pursue, and you just come to the realization that 'man, no matter what we do we're just never gonna get over this line. We're just never gonna get over this particular hurdle.' And your last resort is to move a guy of that level. So anytime you see a guy like that traded it's because the team and the player generally together have decided that we're just not gonna win together."
When asked about the decision the Wizards face with what to do about Beal, Dawkins said, "There's no decision to be made" because Beal is under contract.
"He's a Wizard, he's a star player, we're happy to have him," Dawkins told Team 980 on June 8. "It's appealing in the job walking in [knowing] you have a player like Brad Beal."
When Winger was asked about his earlier comment that, "Sometimes, change for the sake of change accelerates progress," the new president said he didn't mean that to "suggest that we're gonna detonate the roster."
Winger elaborated to Team 980: "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."
During an injury-plagued 2022-23 season, the guard averaged 23.2 points on a career-high 51 percent. Recently he averaged 30.5 points in 57 games in 2019-20 and 31.3 points in 60 games in 2020-21 and 23.2 points in 40 games in 2021-22. But Beal has struggled with injuries throughout his career and the soon-to-be 30-year-old has played 70 games or more in just four of his 11 NBA seasons.
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