What are the Phoenix Suns doing with Bradley Beal?

PHOENIX — It did not take a body language expert to decipher the lack of enthusiasm in the conversation.

Bradley Beal was sitting on a trainer’s table at the Phoenix Suns facility after practice April 4, having what looked like less of a conversation and more of a listen to an elongated message from then-head coach Frank Vogel. At a distance, Beal did not seem engaged nor thrilled.

Who could blame him?

Beal has been through some challenging seasons, but last year surely tops the list.

A back injury in training camp turned into him missing 19 of 22 games to start the season. He arrived in the Valley fully aware of the narratives swirling about his inability to stay healthy, attached to him and hanging over his head like a HUD indicator on 2K. He wouldn’t be fully ready to play until two weeks before Christmas. In his third game back, New York Knicks guard Donte DiVincenzo undercut a Beal jumper five minutes into the game, twisting Beal’s ankle.

He sits for five games, working fine enough on a bum ankle in ways we’ve all watched NBA players do before at long last locating a groove. Beal is slipping into his role. He’s figuring out when he can be 30-point-per-game scorer Bradley (expletive) Beal and also when to step to the side, doing the dirty work.

To some, the highlight may have been a 37-point outburst in L.A. against the Lakers. For everyone, it should have been his 13-7-5 stat line while guarding Zion Williamson in a road win versus the New Orleans Pelicans.

In the very next game, Indiana Pacers center Myles Turner inadvertently elbows Beal in the face.

Beal plays through that too, this time with a mask. It again takes him time to adjust. Eight contests later, he rampages for 43 at his old stomping grounds in D.C. before following it up with a 25-piece and a 30-burger. Two games later, he plays 4:39 and tweaks his hamstring. He’s out five more games.

But no ramp-up period is required this go-around. Beal labors through 20 minutes in Houston and then proceeds to post an eight-game stretch over two weeks of 22.6 points and 6.1 assists per game on 54.6% shooting. Devin Booker is out for the first week and Beal keeps it rolling upon his return.

Until he didn’t. At some point at the turn of the new year, Beal is appointed the “point guard” of the team — or at least it was vocalized as such. On the surface level, it looks like an effort for the Suns to make their third banana feel valuable. While he’s bringing the ball up a fair bit and playmaking, it is still Booker’s show and everyone knows the Suns reach the tallest heights that way. Hell, Beal himself probably knows that.

Through injuries and a team just attempting to figure out how to co-exist, Beal is trying his best with this role. He’s even buying in. But the balancing act is understandably too much. Being Bradley (expletive) Beal and Point Guard Bradley Beal on the flip of a dime is affecting him. Beal starts to get passive and less connected to the core of the offense. After that two-week flurry, Beal goes on to attempt less than 15 shots in each of the next nine games. The last time that happened was 2013 when he was a 19-year-old rookie.

Teammates and coaches are urging Beal to be more aggressive. They know they can’t win with just Point Guard Bradley Beal and without Bradley (expletive) Beal. But after going in and out of the lineup due to injury with his role ever-changing — all while receiving inconsistent messaging from the coaching staff — Beal is likely exasperated.

That’s what it looked like on his face during that post-practice talk with Vogel, a moment in the middle of that unassertive string of games.

Beal reels up one more surge to end the year, 26.8 points per game in the final five, and then the playoffs were what they were.

That is not the story most of you remember for Beal this past season. It’s understandable. The lasting image for many fans of his first Suns season will be the most recent one they got, an awful Game 4 performance in the sweep at the hands of the Minnesota Timberwolves, an outing that surely is placed at the bottom of Beal’s career.

And now, one season after the Suns tripled down on committing to the second tax apron we’ve watched a handful of teams avoid with purpose this offseason — doing so by trading for Beal on a bad contract that cemented his place in Phoenix for four years — they’ve added a starting point guard.

All of this inspires the proclamation: What are the Phoenix Suns doing with Bradley Beal?

The short term is obvious. They are punting on the idea that Beal and Booker could work together as an initiating backcourt, using two extremely well-rounded two-guards and Kevin Durant to make up for not having a point guard. It’s less about the direction the league and moreso about the evolution of the game that certainly made this a half-decent gambit to attempt when there were little to no appealing options left to do with Chris Paul.

It didn’t work, “it” being the thing the Suns committed four years to. And they’re bailing on it in a year.

Is it the right decision? Impossible to say. Those of you who were clamoring for a floor general just scoffed, a valid response. But how much of this was on Beal’s health ruining continuity; how much of this was on Vogel’s inability to get buy-in ruining connectivity; how much of this was on how Beal and Booker work together; and how much of this was on not having a point guard?

It can’t be fully answered next year.Three of those four factors have been too significantly altered to make a rock-solid claim.

So to get back to Beal: Now what?

Signing Tyus Jones for $3.3 million was like seeing a misplaced sticker price and winning a dispute for it at customer service. It’s a no-brainer. That is, until it bumps either Booker or Beal to the third guard position in the starting lineup. And let’s be honest, that is going to be Beal. Jones brings value with the ball in his hands and then there’s Booker and Durant. Where does that leave Beal in the offense?

Jones is listed at 6-foot-1. Who is defending the star ball-handlers? Beal showed a penchant for it in the back half of the season, including a great effort on Anthony Edwards he got hardly any credit for in the postseason. Booker is the most capable of the three but is coming off his lowest defensive season in nearly a half-decade.

All of that is to say Beal is going to go from getting asked to become a point guard to become a 3-and-D wing.

A much-offered solution here is to transition Beal into a bench role. Perhaps a patch of Beal struggling as other parts of the team thrive sparks at least the beginning of a dialogue. That, however, is the point we will have to reach first. A 31-year-old three-time All-Star making $50-plus million a year over the next three seasons does not turn into a sixth man after one shaky season. The NBA has never worked like that and will not anytime soon.

The most damning part of it all is while Jones’ inclusion makes the Suns deeper and fixes some other issues it also creates a log jam with guard-sized players. There are 144 minutes to give out at the 1, 2 and 3. Let’s toss 32 each on the Mike Budenholzer Program™ to Booker and Beal. Let’s limit Jones to 25. That leaves 55 minutes to go between Grayson Allen, Monte Morris and Royce O’Neale. It’s already not enough for Allen and O’Neale as it is. Morris surely signed with some sort of expectation to play. And before you mention playing O’Neale at the 4, my goodness look at the size of this team.

Trade one of them then, right? If it’s Allen, there goes the best complementary shooter on the team and the one guy with consistent and impactful high-end energy last season. If it’s O’Neale, is there a bigger and better 3-and-D wing for a pretty good 3-and-D wing? Using that logic would mean the Suns made a move that forces them to make another move, which is always a bad recipe. Remember, a lot of the optimism for next year spawns from starting to build some continuity.

Maybe this is just ignorance. The Suns are going to work around Beal, behaving like this is all part of some new step in his career when in all actuality this is just the best they feel they can do, steps that would ignore how they need Beal at his best to win a championship. Maybe the Suns are right and this is what Beal needs.

Who knows. Worst of all, Beal probably doesn’t either.

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