Bradley Beal trade rumors: Six likeliest destinations for Wizards All-Star

Bradley Beal is one of the trickier trade candidates to hit the market in recent memory. All-Star guards that can create their own shot deep in the playoffs are extraordinarily rare and quite valuable, but that’s just about the only thing Beal has going for him at this point in his career.

Beal has four years and over $200 million left on his contract. He’s played only 90 games over the past two seasons due to injury. He’s about to turn 30 and has never been a strong defender, and his 3-point shooting has declined considerably in recent years. Oh, and on top of all of this, Beal has a no-trade clause. Not only does that give him the freedom to essentially pick his next team, but if he thinks that team is giving up too much in the deal, he can just veto it until Washington relents.

The Wizards seem to want to rebuild. They can’t do so properly with Beal on the team. But with all of this in mind, the range of teams they can actually trade him to is pretty limited and their return will likely be among the smallest ever paid for a star during the player-movement era. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five of the likeliest destinations if the Wizards ultimately pull the trigger on a Beal trade this summer.

Shams Charania and Josh Robbins of The Athletic has already reported that the Heat are interested, and it’s not hard to see why. Miami just came one shot-creator away from possibly winning the championship. The appeal for Beal is similar. Aside from having the chance to play for a contender in sunny south Florida, he’d also save a fortune in a state without income taxes.

The Heat probably lack the ammunition to trade for a typical superstar. Portland likely isn’t taking Tyler Herro and three first-round picks for Damian Lillard, for instance, unless Lillard were to try force the issue. But a flawed All-Star like Beal? Right in their wheelhouse. Few teams are better at maximizing what a player does well and minimizing his weaknesses than the Heat.

If the Heat put Herro and three first-round picks on the table, this thing probably gets done quickly. How much room will they have to haggle? It will depend on what other offers Washington gets. Maybe the compromise here involves Washington eating the bad contracts of Kyle Lowry and Duncan Robinson, which would in turn free up more money beneath the second apron for Miami to re-sign Gabe Vincent and Max Strus. No matter the offer, the Heat enter these sweepstakes as the heavy favorite, and can probably get this thing done for less than that all-in “three picks and Herro” package.

New Wizards president Michael Winger came to Washington after serving as general manager of the Clippers for the past several years. Relationships grease the deal wheels all of the time in the NBA. Kevin McHale sending Kevin Garnett to former teammate Danny Ainge and the Boston Celtics stands out in this regard. What really matters here, though, is intel. Winger knows more about the Clippers than any other team. If he thinks Terence Mann is due for a breakout, he can trade for him.

More importantly, if he knows more about the long-term health of Kawhi Leonard and Paul George than the rest of us, he might want to short the Clippers’ draft stock. This is notable as the Clippers have slowly restocked with tradable picks over the past several seasons. In July, the Clippers will be able to trade two unprotected picks (2028 and 2030) along with two unprotected swaps (2027 and 2029) for Beal. 

More importantly for the Clippers, this might be their last chance to make this sort of trade. The new CBA will restrict trades involving picks seven years out for teams that are above the second apron starting in the 2024-25 season. If the Clippers are going to add a third max salary, the time to do so is now. They have more than enough mid-tier salary to match money on Beal. He’s even succeeded alongside Russell Westbrook if the Clippers plan to bring him back. If any team was going to feel comfortable dealing with the enormous limitations of paying three max players that are coming with the new CBA, it would be Steve Ballmer’s Clippers. He’d pay any price to win it all.

Boston Celtics

Beal has been a rumored Celtics target for years, and it all stems back to his lifelong friendship with Jayson Tatum. The two of them both grew up in St. Louis. They attended the same high school, though never at the same time, and Tatum played AAU ball for Brad Beal Elite. The two played together for Team USA, and as such, there has been plenty of speculation about when they would link up in the NBA.

There’s no easy path here for Boston. The Celtics will have access to all of their first-round picks once their obligation to Indiana expires next week and could therefore offer as many as four first-rounders to Washington, but that would mean having three max salaries moving forward. That might not be an absolute non-starter, but it would effectively lock Boston into finishing above the second apron four years in a row, which would have enormous team-building ramifications while also costing ownership a fortune. They could dangle Jaylen Brown instead, but does Washington even want a star veteran about to sign a new max contract? He wouldn’t exactly help their rebuild if he stayed, and the Wizards couldn’t risk losing him for nothing. In any event, Brown is simply more valuable than Beal is today.

Maybe there’s a three-team construction here in which Boston moves Brown to a third party and then, with its newly-acquired cap flexibility, uses picks to go get Beal. A scenario in which the Celtics make their rumored-swap of Brown to Portland for the No. 3 pick makes some sense in this regard. Tatum and Beal could keep the Celtics in contention right now, but Brandon Miller or Scoot Henderson on a cost-controlled contract for four years would go a long way towards keeping long-term expenses down.

This is all speculation. For now, the likeliest approach for Boston this offseason is going to involve only slight retooling around Tatum and Brown. However, it’s worth noting that Brown has not yet agreed to an extension, and NBA friendship frequently result in partnerships. Until we know for sure that Tatum and Beal aren’t pairing up, we can’t rule it out as a possibility.

Does Bradley Beal make much on-court sense for the Knicks? Not really, no. They could certainly use another ball-handler and shooter, but they already have a small, defensively-deficient guard making a lot of money in Jalen Brunson. Right now, Brunson is probably the more valuable player. Beal would likely be an improvement upon RJ Barrett, but the Knicks also have Immanuel Quickley, Quentin Grimes and Josh Hart to think about in the back court. The last thing the Knicks need is more guards.

However, we know from last summer’s Donovan Mitchell negotiations that the Knicks want to trade for two superstars, not just one. Beal represents an appealing middle ground from that perspective. He can likely be had cheap enough for the Knicks to still eventually make a bigger trade, for the sort of MVP candidate that they’ve truly been seeking as a centerpiece. Once July arrives, the Knicks will have a whopping 11 tradable first-round picks to work with. That includes one pick that originally came from Washington which is heavily protected, but likely still appeals to the Wizards as a way to avoid Stepien Rule problems.

If there’s a deal to be made here around a few picks and either Barrett or Julius Randle, it’s worth poking around for New York. If nothing else, it might help them recruit Joel Embiid down the line, as Embiid reportedly wanted the 76ers to trade for Beal in 2022. Having Brunson makes the Knicks relevant, but pairing him with Beal makes them likely the single most attractive destination for bigger stars that might eventually hit the open market.

This sort of trade is unlikely on several levels. The most obvious is that the Lakers have less to trade than these other teams. They can offer two first-round picks, but one of them, No. 17 overall this year, has far less upside than the sort of deep future selections the Clippers can dangle. Their unprotected 2029 pick is appealing, but the Lakers have a way of wriggling their way out of jams based on market alone. More pressingly, the Lakers also have a matching salary problem. To avoid hard-capping themselves at the first apron, they’d have to send out roughly $42.5 million in the deal, as they could not absorb more than 110% of their outgoing salary. Right now, the Lakers don’t even have that much matching money.

Assuming LeBron James and Anthony Davis are off the table, the Lakers literally only have around $39.3 million in tradable salary. That would mean sending out the five other salaried players on their roster (Malik Beasley, Mo Bamba, Jarred Vanderbilt, Max Christie and Shaq Harrison) along with the No. 17 pick. For the Lakers to reach that $42.5 million threshold, they’d have to sign-and-trade one of their own free agents. Obviously Rui Hachimura is not going back to Washington, and Austin Reaves is untouchable. That essentially means that the Lakers would have to find a way to work a D’Angelo Russell sign-and-trade into this thing. That’s unlikely for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which is the consent it would require from Russell.

So why are the Lakers on this list? A few reasons. The Lakers and Wizards have a great trading relationship. They’ve made three trades in the past four seasons, and while Winger is new to Washington, plenty of the relationships Pelinka has with other Wizards staffers still stand. Beal would also satisfy LeBron James’ desire for another reliable scorer to ease some of his offensive burden. The Lakers are always interested in landing available stars even when doing so doesn’t make sense for them (see Westbrook, Russell).

But the biggest reason? Beal has complete control over this process, and most of the time, stars want to play for the Lakers. There is a non-zero chance that between now and draft night, Beal has a clandestine meeting with James and Anthony Davis much like Westbrook did in 2021 and emerges with a directive for Winger to trade him to the Lakers and only the Lakers. That is unlikely for all of the reasons that we’ve covered, but, well, these are the Lakers we’re talking about here. They’ve landed stars with much longer odds.

Philadelphia 76ers

The initial reporting out of Philadelphia is that a deal is unlikely, according to Kyle Neubeck of Philly Voice. But Embiid’s interest in a partnership with Beal holds weight, and if the Sixers lose James Harden, they’re going to have to be aggressive in pursuit of a replacement. With so many of their future first-round picks tied up in trades, their options on this front will be somewhat limited.

If they’re willing to put Tyrese Maxey on the table in a deal with Tobias Harris? They’ve got a real shot here. Are they desperate enough to compete right now to do so? And how much better is Beal today than Maxey? All of this makes such a trade relatively unlikely, and the Sixers have so little available draft capital that any other package feels well short of even Washington’s seemingly meager requirements.