Time and time again, the truth in the NBA is you’re either a contender or you should tank.
As I’ve written countless times, the middle is death in the NBA — in fact, I wrote it on the very subject I’m about to cover back in February! Sorry to repeat myself but it’s true.
Now, thanks to the Washington Wizards signing Bradley Beal to an extension, the franchise has a chance to be in the middle, not quite bad enough to compete for a future-changing top lottery pick and certainly not good enough to run with the East contenders or even possibly some of the fringe playoff teams in the conference.
It’s not Beal’s fault. He’s one of the NBA’s best scorers (he finished 10th in the league in scoring last year) and he more than deserves the money he’s going to earn in the coming years. But the Wizards shouldn’t have offered the extension in the first place. Instead, they should have shopped him around to contenders and gotten back the kind of return that would jump-start a rebuild with young talents and future picks.
The real problem is the Wizards are saddled with John Wall’s onerous supermax deal, one he signed before he ruptured his Achilles, the kind of injury that saps the talent out of All-Stars. It’s an untradeable contract, and even if Wall returns, he likely won’t be worth the money he’ll earn in the next few years (per Spotrac, it’s nearly $38.2 million this season, $41.3 million in 2020-21, over $44 million in 2021-22 and a player option for nearly $47.4 million in 2022).
Perhaps Beal signing the extension is a sign that he has faith in Wall returning to some kind of good form, and if he’s right, that would be turn out to be quite the prescient move given the history of NBA players who came back from Achilles injuries.
Either way, with that contract on the books for the next few years, the Wizards are stuck. The only upside talent they can focus on is center Thomas Bryant and Rui Hachimura, the Gonzaga power forward they took with the No. 9 pick in this year’s draft.
Of course, they now have one of the NBA’s best shooting guards, and not every team can boast that. But it won’t matter. The Wizards will be stuck in mediocrity for years. At least the fans and the front office get to watch Beal up close for another few years instead of seeing him thrive on a contender.
