{"id":78280,"date":"2024-05-21T14:08:43","date_gmt":"2024-05-21T18:08:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=78280"},"modified":"2024-05-21T14:08:43","modified_gmt":"2024-05-21T18:08:43","slug":"wizards-will-dawkins-opens-up-bradley-beal-suns-trade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2024\/05\/21\/wizards-will-dawkins-opens-up-bradley-beal-suns-trade\/","title":{"rendered":"Wizards Executive Opens Up About Bradley Beal-Suns Trade"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/b\/bealbr01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bradley Beal<\/a> was traded to the Phoenix Suns last year, it was the biggest offseason transaction up to that point.<\/p>\n<p>It didn&#8217;t catch anyone off guard. His desire to be on a competitive team was well-documented and the Washington Wizards went 35-47 in back-to-back seasons. Nonetheless, Beal had spent his entire career with the Wizards. It&#8217;s not every day that a franchise trades a player who was there for 11 seasons. Especially the face of the franchise.<\/p>\n<h2>Will Dawkins Opens Up About Bradley Beal-Suns Trade<\/h2>\n<p>On Tuesday, Wizards general manager Will Dawkins made an appearance on Run It Back, addressing the team&#8217;s timeline-altering trade. Asked if it was difficult to trade Beal with his no-trade clause, Dawkins denied that it was, saying, &#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t say it was a complication for us. I would say, once we got there &#8211;(Brad&#8217;s) great, as you guys know &#8212; (we) got an opportunity to sit down and find out what was important to him.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When we sat down with Brad and had a conversation with his representation, it was pretty clear the direction we wanted to go, and the direction he wanted to go,&#8221; Dawkins continues.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">&#8220;When we sat down with Bradley [Beal] and had a conversation with his representation, it was pretty clear the direction we wanted to go, and the direction he wanted to go&#8230;At this time in his career he probably didn&#8217;t make sense for where we wanted to take the team.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Will\u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/FtN9xOHTFU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/FtN9xOHTFU<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Run It Back (@RunItBackFDTV) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RunItBackFDTV\/status\/1792941052346900796?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">May 21, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Brad loves DC,&#8221; he adds. &#8220;(He) was great for everybody there. But at this time in his career, he probably didn&#8217;t make sense for where we wanted to take the team.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Notably, when Beal made his trade request, the Suns weren&#8217;t on his radar as a potential destination.<\/p>\n<p>At the time, the three-time All-Star was angling for a trade to the Miami Heat. Interestingly, Beal may have been in the same position with Miami that he&#8217;s in with Phoenix, and not just because neither team made it past the First Round. Although the Heat began the season with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/l\/lowryky01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kyle Lowry<\/a> as their starting point guard, Miami may have moved him in their deal for Beal due to his sizable expiring contract.<\/p>\n<p>If so, that may have led to Beal taking over for Lowry, playing a position that he&#8217;s never manned full-time. From high school to now, he&#8217;s been a 2-guard. Nonetheless, the Heat and head coach Erik Spoelstra have plenty of experience running an offense without a nominal point guard. With that said, Beal may have been more comfortable in that role had he been traded to Miami.<\/p>\n<h3>The Last Word on the Bradley Beal Trade<\/h3>\n<p>Despite playing out of position, Beal turned in a solid season in 2023-24. In 53 games, he averaged 18.2 points and 5.0 assists per game on a career-high 43.0 percent shooting from 3. In sacrificing scoring opportunities so that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/b\/bookede01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Devin Booker<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/d\/duranke01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kevin Durant<\/a> could feel comfortable with their shot volume, he had more energy to expend defensively. As Suns general manager James Jones confirms Phoenix&#8217;s reworked Big 3 will <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2024\/05\/18\/suns-does-it-make-sense-keep-big-3-together\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">run it back next season<\/a>, Beal might look even better next season. A full offseason to gel with Booker and Durant could do wonders, especially if there&#8217;s better balance among the trio.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, Dawkins was right to move Beal. The Wizards had reached their ceiling with him as the No. 1 option. Yet, they were seemingly unable to acquire a player better than him, limiting their options. With the writing on the wall, Washington has now committed to a rebuild.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Bradley Beal was traded to the Phoenix Suns last year, it was the biggest offseason transaction up to that point. It didn&#8217;t catch anyone off guard. His desire to be on a competitive team was well-documented and the Washington Wizards went 35-47 in back-to-back seasons. Nonetheless, Beal had spent his entire career with the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5008,"featured_media":78293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,1608,16,62,3,28],"tags":[311,1382,49110],"class_list":["post-78280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wizards","category-basketball","category-heat","category-nba","category-news","category-suns","tag-bradley-beal","tag-nba-trade","tag-will-dawkins"],"modified_by":"Quenton S Albertie","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5008"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}