Bradley Beal Says He Has a 'Low Patience Level' After Wizards' Disappointing Season

For a few years now, there have been questions about whether Bradley Beal would eventually seek to join a contender after years of the Washington Wizards' mediocrity.

To this point, Beal has remained committed to the franchise. But after a disappointing 2022-23 season, his patience is wearing thin, as he expressed to reporters on Monday:

"I'm definitely disappointed, but I'm not going to sit up here and show you that," he added. "I'm frustrated. I'm angry. I expressed that to the necessary voices and people who need to hear it, for sure."

The Wizards went just 35-47 this past year, missing both the postseason and play-in tournament. It was the fourth time in the past five years that Washington has missed the playoffs, and the franchise hasn't won a playoff series since the 2016-17 campaign.

It was one of three playoff series Beal has won in his time with the Wizards.

One fair critique of Beal is asking what exactly he was expecting when he signed a five-year, $251 million supermax deal with the Wizards last offseason. Players like Kristaps Porziņģis, Kyle Kuzma, Corey Kispert and Deni Avdija—the main core of this year's team—were already on the roster, and Washington didn't have many avenues for improving further.

The cynical view might be that Beal simply wanted to re-sign with the Wizards since they could offer him the most money, with the backup plan of trying to force a trade down the line if he decided it was time to prioritize chasing rings.

The more charitable view is that Beal wants to win a title with the Wizards—and has been trying to give them as many opportunities to get there as possible—but is starting to come around to the possibility that it may never be in the cards.

Either way, Beal didn't exactly play up to his usual standards in the 2022-23 campaign, averaging 23.2 points and 5.4 assists per game in 50 contests while shooting 50.6 percent from the field and 36.5 percent from three. A number of injuries cost him 32 games, which didn't help Washington's cause.

It was his second straight season averaging exactly 23.2 points, and his second injury-affected season after he played just 40 games last year. Both were a far cry from the career-high 31.3 points he averaged in the 2020-21 season.

So Beal's patience may be running thin, but he also hasn't reached his prior elite levels in the past two seasons. That, combined with questionable roster construction around him, has been a recipe for disaster.