Was it the right move at the time? Even if the results didn’t pan out as anticipated?
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Whether it’s two hours, days, weeks, or months, it appears Bradley Beal’s tenure with the Phoenix Suns is coming to a close. As numerous reports suggest, Beal is expected to be bought out of his contract in the near future, officially ending his time in the Valley.
Since he came to the Valley from the Washington Wizards after being acquired for Chris Paul, Landry Shamet, and a bounty of second-round picks and first-round swaps, the Suns have massively underperformed, winning no playoff games and making the playoffs just once despite having the highest payroll in NBA history.
While the team performed significantly worse than expected, before the trade, Phoenix was in a financial bind with Chris Paul at the time and were not going to have significant flexibility to build the roster around Devin Booker and Kevin Durant whether he was released or traded because of the asset and financial situation the team put themselves in by signing Deandre Ayton to a max extension the summer before and trading for Kevin Durant months earlier.
When making the trade for Durant, the new CBA rules were not announced, and by the time the offseason came around, it was very clear Phoenix was likely to be a second-round team with their core, no matter what they did around Booker and Durant.
The Suns logic by trading for Beal was to maximize their talent as much as possible at the current moment, independent of the financial or asset situation the team would be in and a trio of Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal, all players who were coming off of seasons averaging at least 23 points a game, would light the league on fire. Even if the team were in a tough spot down the road, they would have nothing to be sorry about because they would be winning.
“They went for it, which I’ll always respect. I think they gave up a little too much, especially considering they had none of their own firsts, and they kind of drained themselves of assets. So I think maybe in asset management, I would have done something different. But in terms of the trade, like, I can’t sit here and say that, that I wouldn’t have done it, they made a move to go all in around a core that they felt comfortable in. And so I would have done that. Now that we can talk about the moves they made after, because I think they kind of fumbled from there. But in terms of the trade, like, I have no gripes about I think Phoenix wanted to try to win, and they made a move that just didn’t work,” one of Bullets Forever’s lead writers Greg Finberg told Bright Side last month in a piece reviewing the Bradley Beal trade two years after it became official.
While he’s on a max contract, Beal has been hard to trade for the Suns, not just because of his salary, but also his no-trade clause in his contract, the Wizards gave him when he signed his deal in 2022. When the Suns were looking to get out of the Beal business at the trade deadline to acquire Jimmy Butler, they reportedly had a tough time dealingwith him and instead had to look to trade Kevin Durant if they wanted a shot at adding Butler because of his no-trade clause.
While Beal individually had some strong moments including his 43 points in his first game back in Washington in his first year as a Sun, or his huge steal in game 81 of the regular season in the 2023-2024 season against the Sacramento Kings that helped keep the Suns out of the play-in tournament, but overall, his averages are down since joining the team and so were the Suns wins and by the time the 2024-2025 season ended, many Suns fans and pundits were frustrated with his attitude, including the way he took Mike Budenholzer asking him to play like Jrue Holiday.
According to @ChrisBHaynes, Bradley Beal was offended when Mike Budenholzer asked him to be the Suns’ version of Jrue Holiday – sorry, but this anecdote is the sign of a soft player and not a terrible head coach. https://t.co/6Vkf8LJnNM
— Dan Bickley (@danbickley) April 14, 2025
Hindsight will always be 20/20, but were the Suns right at the time to trade for Beal considering the situation they were in?
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