Building with Beal: Wizards future will depend on choosing their future with Beal over Wall
In order to maximize its future, the Washington Wizards must choose a future with Bradley Beal over John Wall
The 2019-20 NBA season for the Washington Wizards has been an indisputable leap year for the franchise. Their franchise point guard John Wall has been out of commission all year, and Bradley Beal has had to pick up the slack.
From a statistical perspective, Beal has done so by amassing career-highs in points (30.5), assists (6.1), and free-throw shooting (84.2%). There’s been no disputing the emergence of Beal from a fringe All-Star selection as an ex-lottery pick product to a true All-NBA product this season, but the team still isn’t a playoff unit within a mediocre Eastern Conference this year.
Much of this is attributed to their muddling defensive productivity which ranges from porous scoring defense (tied with ATL for league-worst allowing 119.7 ppg), horrendous field goal percentage allowed (49.0% which is second-worst), and problematic 3-point percentage allowed (37.8% which is third-worst).
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Wall and Beal make up 49 percent of Washington’s cap sheet. Beal just received his super-max extension from the team before the start of the 2019-20 season and at 26 years old, is still a positive investment for the franchise as he’s beginning to reach his prime. Wall, on the other hand, is making up to $40 million in the coming years and will be 30 next season when he does return from an Achilles injury.
One can fairly wonder if his game predicated on speed and athleticism will take a hit because of his age and injury-riddled past. With a healthy Wall back in the lineup, Washington is a guaranteed playoff team. Can they win a series however in the crucial months of April and May to even be a finals contender in June though?
In all reality, probably not.
With that being noted, one has to wonder, can the two guards co-exist with one another on the floor down the line. The two have said their squabbles with each other on the court and have advocated they are things of the past, but the circumstances then and now are vastly different.
Then, Wall was the undisputed leader of the team and franchise’s best player in life after Gilbert Arenas. Now, Beal has usurped Wall as a talent, and while it remains to be seen if Brad is truly a franchise player, he too is an All-NBA talent now. That dynamic will require Wall to either adapt and become more of a facilitator at the lead-guard position or rebel and continue to be the combo-guard dynamo he was in his pre-injury seasons.
The latter could stunt Bradley’s evolution as a great player in this league and re-ignite the issues both talents had last decade.
The Wizards have a few free-agent decisions that they have to make regarding Davis Bertans and Ian Mahinmi. They’ll have a lottery pick that they can use to fill out their young roster to which they’ll design and build around Bradley Beal. However, the Wizards future will depend on what they’ll do with John Wall, and if he should be in the team’s plans.
Wall is an aging point guard with an anemic mid-range game and an athletic skill-set predicated on speed. The latter is an attribute that could possibly be compromised while coming off of an Achilles injury. Beal has usurped him as the lead dog on the team not just this year but the year prior when Brad averaged 25, 5 and 5 on 47 percent shooting.
With that reality in mind, it serves the Wizards right to pivot from Wall as their franchise player and lead guard and package him for an array of young assets and picks to fill out their youthful but weak roster.
The team probably won’t have a chance to get James Wiseman, who’d be an ideal fit, in the 2020 NBA Draft and Anthony Edwards isn’t a need with Beal at the shooting guard position. However, a big man and another lead guard would be necessities in that realm.
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Currently, Beal is the team’s game-changing player and the development of rookie Rui Hachimura as a two-way player is a promising reality. Yet, for this team to advance towards a brighter future, letting go of John Wall, their prize selection a decade ago, is the only way to advance forward.