Age: 31
Position: Guard
Contract Value: 50.2M
Expiration: 2027 (player option)
Beal is still a valuable basketball player, but he just happens to be paid an exceptional amount of money for a player who is no longer an All-Star. He makes $50.2 million this season and has two years, $111 million locked beyond this season. I asked five executives, “What would Beal get in free agency if he were available in free agency this summer?” The answers ranged from $25 million to $35 million per year. Count this one as another win for Mark Bartelstein and Priority Sports, an agency with a long track record of getting clients paid handsomely.
Three other factors beyond that make trading Beal incredibly complicated. First, he has a no-trade clause, meaning he can reject any deal he’s presented with if it doesn’t suit him. Second, the Suns are over the second apron by a significant margin, which means the Suns can’t aggregate players in a deal along with Beal to make his contract more palatable. Finally, the team has limited draft capital to trade.
But the Suns would like to shake up their roster in a big way, and Beal is the only mechanism outside of Kevin Durant and Devin Booker that would allow them to make a move for Jimmy Butler. However, to get Butler, the Suns would need to find a third team that would be willing to take Beal, as the Heat are believed to have no interest in taking Beal’s contract back for Butler. The Suns have shifted Beal to the bench, and he hasn’t played poorly in a vacuum this season, averaging 17.1 points, 3.6 rebounds and 3.3 assists while shooting 48.5 percent from the field and 38.6 percent from 3. He’s also shown increased attention to detail and effort on defense. However, he’s a bit small for this roster, and it’s hard to create lineups that are successful with him, Durant, Booker and another guard. It would probably behoove the Suns to be able to move on from Beal, but it’s going to be hard to find a landing spot for him, even in a deal for Butler.
