It's time to set some things straight on the Bradley Beal trade.

-Gerald Bourguet

5 reasons it's way too early to label the Bradley Beal trade a mistake

Raise your hand if you've thought "the Bradley Beal trade was a mistake" at any point over the last 11 months. Now raise your hand if you've heard someone else say it.

Wow, everyone's hand is raised. But that really shouldn't be the case.

That brings us to why I've gathered you here today, to this virtual tribunal in the form of a weekly Phoenix Suns newsletter that will surely ruffle feathers for a significant portion of the fanbase.

But it's the truth: It's way, way, way too early to be declaring the Bradley Beal trade to be a mistake. And even if the Big 3 implode and fail to ever win a title, labeling it as such is still fundamentally flawed reasoning.

If you're already rolling your eyes, bear with me for a second. We've briefly touched on this subject before with our five Suns myths, but we're going to go through this one more thoroughly now, step by step, to examine exactly why the Beal trade wasn't a mistake.

1. Bradley Beal was the highest-upside move the Suns could have made last summer

For years, one of the biggest complaints against former owner Robert Sarver -- strictly on the basketball side, of course -- is that he refused to make aggressive moves if they led to a higher payroll. He was a cheap owner who routinely sold off first-round draft picks for cash and avoided the luxury tax like the plague.

Mat Ishbia couldn't be a more polar opposite in that respect. Some will point to the Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal trades as "new owner syndrome," but isn't an aggressive owner who's dedicated to contending for championships exactly what fans wanted all along? Isn't the point of having Devin Booker (in the midst of his prime, coming off an NBA Finals run in 2021) and KD (age 35 but still playing incredible basketball) to maximize their title window?

Standing pat and running it back with Booker, KD, an aging Chris Paul and a discontent Deandre Ayton wouldn't have worked. Anyone suggesting otherwise is still doing bong rips of wishful thinking, loading the bowl with the unfulfilled potential of Ayton and the memories of Paul's first two Suns seasons, and inhaling fumes of nostalgia left over from 2021.

The Suns had to move on from their injury-prone, 37-year-old point guard, and they did so by bringing in the best possible player they could've realistically added. People forget this, but given their cap situation, Ayton's ultra-low trade value, and the players they sent out, the only reason the Suns got Bradley Beal at all was because he got to pick his next landing spot thanks to his no-trade clause.

Remember, the Suns gave up an aging Paul, who spent this season assuming a more suitable role as a backup, Landry Shamet, and a pile of pick swaps and second-round picks for a three-time All-Star. That's pretty exceptional value, and it's better than they could've possibly done trading Paul and/or Shamet anywhere else.

Trust me, we tried. The CP3 trade options were either not realistic or not great!

Outside of Kristaps Porzingis and James Harden (who was technically traded after the 2023-24 season started), there wasn't a single, more significant player who was traded last offseason than Beal. And that's not just this writer's humble opinion either!

"I liked what they did," ESPN's Bobby Marks told PHNX Sports. "I really did. I liked the Durant trade, I understood where they were with that roster. I think you kind of maybe had hit a limit there. The Dallas series probably exposed a lot of things, that Game 7, how it ended. I understood the Beal trade."

Obviously, as any Captain Hindsight can point out, it didn't work. Beal failed to stay healthy, only playing in 53 games. He only averaged 18.2 points per game, which was his lowest scoring average since 2016, and he struggled to step into the kind of playoff role that was supposed to make Phoenix's offense unfair against any opponent.

But guess what? These moves aren't made in the moment with the type of clarity that hindsight offers. All a front office can do is make moves to acquire the type of high-end talent that can push your team closer to winning a title, and then hope for the best.

The Suns couldn't stay healthy and got swept in the first round, which obviously sucks. But even though this will always be a results-based business, that doesn't mean the thinking or the process was flawed. That's the type of revisionist history that ignores how important it was for the Suns to make all-in moves to try and capitalize on Booker and Durant's limited title window together.

"You look back at some of the trades that James and all of us were part of, right? We do those things 100 out of 100 times," Mat Ishbia said in his end-of-season availability. "Not 99 out of 100, 100 out of 100, and we'd still do 'em again, and I think the other 29 GMs would do the exact same thing."

2. No, the Suns didn't "mortgage their future" by adding Beal

Another misconception about the Durant and Beal trades is that the Suns sacrificed their future in other to add these two stars. Believe it or not, Phoenix still has first-round draft picks on deck.

"Five of the next eight years, we have a first-round draft pick," Ishbia said. "I know that's not a cool thing to say out there, because people like to say they have no draft picks, but we have five over the next eight years, and we can trade two of 'em next month if we want. So it's not like people say, [where] we have inflexibility."

This is where the difference between "The Suns are not in control of their first-round picks over the next half-decade" and "The Suns don't own any first-round picks over the next half-decade" is important. Phoenix owes its first-round pick outright in 2025, 2027 and 2029, but in 2024, 2026, 2028, 2030 and 2031, they still very much have a first-round pick!

This year, the Suns' pick swap didn't amount to anything, and so they have the 22nd overall pick that they can either trade or use to select a new rookie. In 2026, they owe the Washington Wizards, Orlando Magic and Memphis Grizzlies the right to swap first-round picks, but no matter which teams choose to enact a potential swap, Phoenix will still have a pick of some sort. The same goes for 2028 (swap rights for the Wizards and Nets) and 2030 (swap rights for the Wizards and Grizzlies).

The Suns plan on being competitive for the foreseeable future, and if they are, those pick swaps will be meaningless. Even if they totally implode, the only way those pick swaps will really hurt is if Phoenix becomes a recurring lottery team and the Wizards, Magic, Grizzlies or Nets become better teams that then have incentive to actually swap their picks.

Beal was traded for Paul, Shamet, four first-round pick swaps and six second-round picks. The draft cupboard isn't exactly flowing in Phoenix right now, but it's nowhere near as barren as it's been made out to be.

3. No, the Suns didn't "choose a third star over depth"

This is the most common false narrative that continues to swirl around the Suns making their move for Bradley Beal. Because Beal was still owed $208 million over four years when Phoenix traded for him, it was easy to assume the Suns were forgoing depth in order to add a third superstar.

All the anxiety over that incoming second tax apron had a lot of people wondering why Phoenix chose to assemble one of the league's last Big 3s, and when they got shellacked in the first round, it felt like some weird form of vindication for the critics who doubted that their team-building method was the right approach.

It's an odd and illogical victory lap to take when one remembers the Suns didn't really have a better path to rounding out their roster around Booker and Durant than the one they chose.

Let's start by dismantling the "they should've just kept Chris Paul and Deandre Ayton!" argument. CP3 was tremendous in his first two Suns seasons and belongs in the Ring of Honor one day, but he was a shell of himself in his final season in the Valley. He struggled with injuries in every single playoff run for Phoenix, only playing 59 games in his last season here and 58 games for the Golden State Warriors this year. Entering his age-38 season, that wasn't going to suddenly get better.

As for Ayton, "Playoff DA" never emerged during his last postseason run, and he looked thoroughly disinterested against the Denver Nuggets. Getting outplayed by Nikola Jokic is one thing, but being a complete non-factor for two straight rounds felt like a breaking point. Even if that weren't the case, Ayton wanted more touches, more opportunities to expand his game on offense, and fewer "big man duties" that he openly said he didn't enjoy.

If you thought the Suns' chemistry and body language was bad with this group, just imagine if Ayton were still in town, getting 6-8 shots a night behind the Big 3. This team would've imploded before Christmas.

Now let's say, for the sake of argument, you agree Paul had to go but believe the Suns could've done better. They had other options aside from trading him, of course, which we covered last summer.

To recap, they could've waived Paul outright, and only the guaranteed $15.8 million portion of his $30.8 million salary would've counted on their cap sheet. That would've opened up some space, but Phoenix still would've been over the cap and over the luxury tax line, which means they only would've had access to their $5 million taxpayer mid-level exception for free agents.

The Suns also could've waived-and-stretched Paul's $15.8 million in guaranteed money over five years ($3.2 million per season). That would've freed up $12 million, getting them below the luxury tax line while opening up the full mid-level exception worth $12.4 million.

In either scenario, the Suns would've had a $5 million MLE or a $12.4 million MLE to work with, instead of being a second tax apron team that was not allowed to use any MLE and could only offer veteran minimum deals. It sounds tantalizing on paper...until one realizes the quality of players that were signed to MLE deals last summer:

Jevon Carter ($6.2 million, Chicago Bulls)
Georges Niang ($8.8 million, Cleveland Cavaliers)
Craig Porter Jr. ($1.5 million, Cleveland Cavaliers)
Dante Exum ($3 million, Dallas Mavericks)
Seth Curry ($4 million, Dallas Mavericks)
Matisse Thybulle ($10.5 million offer sheet with Dallas Mavericks, matched by Portland Trail Blazers)
Gabe Vincent ($10.5 million, Los Angeles Lakers)
Spencer Dinwiddie ($1.6 million, Los Angeles Lakers)
Bismack Biyombo ($5 million, Memphis Grizzlies)
Vince Williams Jr. ($2.2 million, Memphis Grizzlies)
GG Jackson ($2 million, Memphis Grizzlies)
Shake Milton ($5 million, Minnesota Timberwolves)
Troy Brown ($4 million, Minnesota Timberwolves)
E.J. Liddell ($1.8 million, New Orleans Pelicans)
Donte DiVincenzo ($11.7 million, New York Knicks)
Kyle Lowry ($2.8 million, Philadelphia 76ers)
Duop Reath ($2 million, Portland Trail Blazers)
Dennis Schroder ($12.4 million, Toronto Raptors)

Say what you want about Bradley Beal's 2023-24 season, but there is not a single name on that list who's a superior player. Even "better positional fits" would've struggled to make the Suns a better team than they were with Beal.

Gabe Vincent felt like a worthy option coming off his NBA Finals run with the Miami Heat, but he had an awful, injury-riddled season that limited him to 11 games. Spencer Dinwiddie didn't become available as a buyout guy until February. Dennis Schroder could've helped set the table, but anyone arguing Phoenix would've been better with him in Beal's place needs their head examined.

And while Donte DiVincenzo had a tremendous season in New York, he plays the same position as Beal, so the Suns would've had the same "overlap," only with a player who posted a lower scoring average, assist average, field goal percentage and 3-point percentage than Beal.

The idea that Beal's contract ate up all the Suns' cap space last summer is unequivocally incorrect. They had no salary cap space for outside free agents before the Beal trade, and even if they had waived-and-stretched CP3 to free up the MLE, the players from the list above were all worse than the guy they wound up with. "Depth" sounds great on paper until one realizes they had no cap room to bolster it in the first place.

4. Most of the league will be in a similar boat soon

The natural counterargument to all of that is: "Well, the Suns just should've avoided Beal in general! One year of Schroder -- a worse player but at least he's a point guard -- would've been better than being saddled with Beal's contract!"

I completely get the concern over Beal's contract. It's not pretty. He's owed $50.2 million for the upcoming season, $53.7 million in 2025-26 and has an astronomical player option worth $57.1 million in 2026-27.

Beal's salary over the next two years hurts, but again, the Suns probably weren't going to have much wiggle room anyway with Booker and Durant both earning $50 million-plus every year during that same timeframe. They'd obviously have more room to work with, but the whole point of assembling this Big 3 was with the knowledge that they'd have a 1-3 year window to try and win a title.

After that, the summer of 2026 represented their best chance to re-stack the deck. Booker would still be under contract as the face of the franchise, and he'd still be in the midst of his prime as he prepared to enter his age-30 season. Durant would be 37 by then, and (assuming he doesn't get an extension this summer) his contract would be off the books.

That summer is shaping up to be an epic one from a free agency standpoint. Luka Doncic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jayson Tatum, Stephen Curry, De'Aaron Fox, Jimmy Butler, Donovan Mitchell, Bam Adebayo and Mikal Bridges could all be free agents in 2026, at which point Phoenix only has Booker, Grayson Allen and Nassir Little currently on the books.

Well....and possibly a 33-year-old Brad Beal, thanks to a player option that could wreck Phoenix's dreams of landing two marquee free agents that summer. There's no beating around the bush: Given Beal's injury history, that feels like a potential nightmare scenario, especially since he still possesses that no-trade clause.

"Probably my only argument against [the Beal trade], I would have loved to have him eliminate the no-trade clause as part of the deal," Bobby Marks said. "I would have loved to have seen that, but that's hindsight."

Even so, the Suns are not the only team sitting in this tax apron boat. Around one-third of the league will be in the first or second tax apron this summer. Things just got more expensive for the Minnesota Timberwolves and Indiana Pacers with Anthony Edwards and Tyrese Haliburton making All-NBA teams.

Upcoming extensions and young players earning new paydays will push most contenders into an apron that limits their team-building options, and unlike the Suns -- who have most of their contracts locked in already -- the elevated salary cap that comes with a new TV deal may not help them much. If anything, it could inflate those upcoming extensions even more:

"I understood why they did [the Beal trade], basically 'cause these new rules are about to start within a year," Bobby Marks explained. "It's why Boston went out and got [Jrue] Holiday, why the Clippers went out and got [James] Harden, why [Damian] Lillard is in Milwaukee. You had a timeline to go out and do these deals here."

A few years from now, Booker making $50 million will look like a bargain compared to some of the other stars in the league, and even Beal's $50 million won't look as untenable as it does now. The Suns have most of their core under contract, will have plenty of experience operating around the second tax apron by then, and are reportedly bringing in Matt Tellem, one of the best in the business in navigating those types of loopholes.

5. It was only Year 1 of the Big 3 experiment

It's easy to be a prisoner of the moment, and to be fair, some of the doubts surrounding the Big 3 are perfectly valid. The leadership was lacking in their first year together. They struggled to build chemistry, and Beal in particular had a hard time adjusting to a role that fluctuated between off-ball scorer, point guard, and dirty work glue guy on both ends.

But this is where it's important to remember that the Suns still managed to win 49 games despite Beal missing significant time; despite the Big 3's injuries being staggered throughout the season to prevent them from developing any sort of rhythm; despite an entirely new supporting cast around Booker and KD; and despite a brand new coaching staff that struggled to hold players accountable.

It was difficult adapting to all of that, but Beal embraced his role, and that bodes well heading into Year 2 together.

“It's been an adjustment, I won't say it's been the easiest thing," Beal said. "But it's definitely fun to be in this position. With the talent I have, it makes my job easy, you know what I'm saying? It'd be a lot harder if you're asking me to do this with not a lot of talent around me.”

This is where continuity kicks in, and it's the reason Ishbia said he doesn't believe the house is on fire.

"Going into the offseason, I feel great about it," he explained. "There's a lot of other teams that have good players that have to re-sign them or they're gonna lose them or they're unrestricted free agents. Our starting five's coming back. I feel very good about it."

Basically, the Suns didn't go into the Durant and Beal trades thinking 2023-24 was their only crack at it. That first-round sweep was disheartening as hell, but it doesn't have to define them either. Just last year, the Timberwolves were getting dragged for how the Rudy Gobert trade looked in Year 1, and the Mavericks felt like a team ready to implode. Now they're both in the Western Conference Finals.

These are imperfect comparisons, because the Suns are an older team with second tax apron restrictions impeding their progress, but the point is, this front office was always looking at this team's window being more than a one-year shot, and things can change drastically in a year.

“It was never, 'We're gonna win a championship this year or we gotta blow it up,' like this crazy stuff, this just ridiculous stuff," Ishbia said. "So yeah, would I have liked to have won it this year? Absolutely. But I do think continuity, consistency, process works, and guys playing together. One of the things we talked about at the beginning of the year is, can we get our guys to play 60-65 games together, the starting five? I think we played less than 40, right? That continuity does affect it."

Beal echoed those same sentiments in his exit interviews.

“We didn't look at this thing as a one-year thing and we're gonna come in and we only got this year to figure it out," Beal said. "Like, no, we got time. You don't want to use that as like a cop-out, but just the reality we live in, like, that's the game plan. We have a window. Yeah, it's a short window, but we have a window. So we want to maximize it as much as possible, and obviously we still have a lot of room to grow."

Even if you're not drinking the Suns Kool-Aid and have lost belief this group can win it all in the next 1-2 years, some pretty smart people around the league continue to defend their thought process. The goal is to be aggressive, and if you're within striking distance of a title (which Devin Booker and Kevin Durant automatically means that you are), you make moves that give your team the highest possible ceiling.

For better and for worse, that was the Bradley Beal trade. It could look very bad a few years down the road, but it was still a swing worth taking.

"I understand where Phoenix is as far as continuity and everyone says, 'Well, you gotta break up these three guys.' No, you don't," Bobby Marks said. "Like, this is who you are, right? This is who you are for right now, and you kind of have to see it through here."