The Washington Wizards are awful. In the great tradition of Washington sports teams, they just overpaid for a 6’4″ shooting guard who puts up good stats for a terrible team . Beal and the Wizards agreed to a two-year, $72 million maximum extension that will kick in prior to the 2021-22 season, agent Mark Bartelstein confirmed to USA TODAY Sports’ Jeff Zillgitt on Thursday. ESPN first reported the deal.
Are you kidding me? The Wizards are now paying a total of $80,000,000 (yes $80 Million Dollars) for 1 player to be on the floor as John Wall’s $38 M and Ian Mahinmi’s $15M dollar salaries are sitting on the sidelines injured. Wait until the Wiz start load managing Beal during the year to give him a rest for the playoff run they will never get close to. If they don’t load manage him, watch as Beal magically has an injury every 3 weeks forcing him to take off 2 or 3 games in a row.
Why didn’t the Wiz trade him? Because no one thinks he’s that good to make an offer. He’s only 26 years old but he’s played 7 NBA seasons. He’s never lifted a team up above their current playing level. He’s a good player on what’s been a mediocre to bad team since he got out of college. He’s been the beneficiary of a team who never had good all around offensive options hence allowing him to pile up stats while they lost over and over.
My only guess is the Wizards plan is to stink this year and next and get a lottery pick both years. Then they will have a semblance of Beal at age 30, Rui Hachimura in his 4th year, a lottery pick in his 3rd year and another lottery pick going into his 2nd year. They then re-sign Beal again, option in Hachimura to a max and have 3 lottery picks under their rookie contracts.
Okay, I’ll buy that except the lottery is filled with guys like John Wall (no outside shot and never developed one over 7 years), Otto Porter (no inside presence and total role player over-drafter at #3) and Jerian Grant (who?). Don’t forget the Wiz took Porter over Giannis in the same draft. To be fair, 11 other teams also passed on Giannis.
So that’s it. We are left trying to cheer for a team looking at a 4 year process to get back to a winning record.