Bradley Beal Trade Reportedly Eyed by Suns After Kevin Durant Deal to Rockets
Stop us if you've heard this one before—the Phoenix Suns are interested in trading Bradley Beal.
After moving Kevin Durant to the Houston Rockets for Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks, the No. 10 pick in the 2025 NBA draft and five future second-rounders on Sunday, per ESPN's Shams Charania, the Suns likely will look to further shake up the roster.
According to Doug Haller, Sam Amick, and Kelly Iko of The Athletic, "[The Durant trade] will likely not be Phoenix's final move. The Suns are expected to try and part ways with Beal, but his salary (he is owed nearly $111 million over the next two seasons) and contract (he has a no-trade clause) will make that difficult. Phoenix explored moving Beal in February but never came close to making a deal."
As though Beal's salary and his ability to veto any trade weren't big enough hurdles on their own, there's also the fact that the 31-year-old's play has declined since he averaged 30.5 points per game for the Washington Wizards in the 2019-20 season and 31.3 points per game in the 2020-21 campaign.
In two seasons in Phoenix he's scored just 17.6 points per contest and has missed a combined 58 games in that time. A slight dip was to be expected, given that both Durant and Devin Booker needed to get their shots up as well, but Beal also averaged just 23.2 points per game in each of his last two seasons in Washington and missed a combined 74 games in that period.
This is no longer the player who was one of the better scorers in the NBA and a three-time All-Star during his peak years, in other words.
Generally, a player's peak doesn't end in his early 30s necessarily, but Beal's inability to stay consistently healthy may be precipitating a downturn in quality. At this point, NBA teams may see him as a negative asset, given his massive contract, which could make it incredibly difficult to move him.
It probably will be easier, and more realistic, for the Suns to add more teams to their trade with the Rockets and reroute Jalen Green as they look to rebuild the roster around Booker. At the very least, teams may be a bit more interested in Beal a year from now when he would represent a major expiring contract, allowing them to free up cap space ahead of 2027's free agency period.
