Though his past free agency is already in the books, Bradley Beal made a look back on how situations went in for his part.
Beal, who inked a five-year supermax extension worth $251MM this season to remain in the D.C. area, admitted that he considered other options before making a return in his appearance on “The Old Man and The Three” podcast of J.J. Reddick.
“I was definitely being human and thinking about it,” Beal said. “I was thinking about what it’d be like on the other side, on different teams, and seeing what was available for me. The market was what it was, and it wasn’t too promising. It wasn’t necessarily what I wanted to do, but I ended up staying and I felt like that was the best decision for me.”
The microwave star didn’t also deny trade request contemplations inside of his thinking before striking a deal with the Wizards brass.
“I think. I live in the present. I have a phone just like everybody else,” Beal said. “I see people go, ‘Oh, you should go here, what it’d be like if you played with Jayson [Tatum], what it’d be like if you went to Brooklyn, if you went to LA or went to Denver.’ Yeah, s–t, it would look good. I’m not going to sit here and lie.
“I also know that those deals, it’s going to take a while for those things to get done. You’re going to offer up pretty much your whole team in order to get to where you want to get to, so it’s kind of playing devil’s advocate, too, in where you want to go and factoring all that into it. It’s a part of the game. I definitely gave it some thought.”
Beal, 27, has been stapled as a common component of trade buzz throughout last season. But as he made a return and commitment for years to come, he can certainly hope for much better success individually and collectively as the Wizards’ face of the franchise.
