On Sunday, the Washington Wizards and Phoenix Suns came together to make a trade that immediately sent shockwaves throughout the NBA and its fanbase. The Wizards sent Bradley Beal, Jordan Goodwin, and Isaiah Todd to Phoenix in return for Chris Paul, Landry Shamet, and multiple draft picks. From afar, it appears that the Suns absolutely demolished the Wizards in this deal. However, there are certainly more factors involved than meets the eye.
Most of the issues come into play under the NBA’s new CBA—where the penalty for spend-heavy teams is pretty intense. To provide brief context: the NBA has a soft cap (which allows teams to spend over the designated “limit”), but the new luxury tax will now aim to put irresponsible teams in a financial chokehold by asserting restrictions over a specified dollar amount. Among those restrictions includes not being able to use the taxpayer MLE (around $10 million annually) and forcing teams to enter a hard cap upon using their MLE to exceed the second apron. The majority of that probably sounds like front-office jargon. The bigger point is that the CBA’s newly implemented restrictions are meant to prevent teams from having more than two max-contracts and Phoenix now has four.
So, for everyone who begged for the departure of Chris Paul, it’s going to cost you. The 2023-24 contracts for Beal, Devin Booker, Kevin Durant, and Deandre Ayton combine for $163 million. The first apron is set at $169 million and the second apron is $179.5 million, which should restrict the Suns from being able to add anything other than minimum salaries to this mix. While most people see Beal’s name and are quick to dismiss any potential problems, it feels like the masses are overlooking the fact that this roster has no depth, point guard, or premier defenders. Sure, Beal is a talented player but he’s declining while his salary increases. Would you rather figure out how to manage Paul’s 2-year/$60 million contract (not fully guaranteed) or pay Beal over $200 million over the next four years' Furthermore, Beal (again, declining) maintains his no-trade clause and has a player option for $57 million after he’s turned 33 (hint: that’s getting picked up). It’s understandable that a young new owner wants to make a splash in the league, but this roster is a few injuries away from having to depend on G-League guys to play heavy minutes.
The Suns have made their bed and there’s very little they can do to fix the situation. The common idea of “trade Ayton” only works when folks haven’t ripped him apart over the recent months (subsequently ruining their leverage in any trade discussion). Meanwhile, the Wizards actually have a lot of interesting decisions to make. Waiving Paul feels like the obvious move, especially since it feels like Kyle Kuzma and Kristaps Porzingis should warrant a ton of attention as free agents on the open market. This move is probably a year late (since the Wembanyama sweepstakes has passed), but they’ve done well to get this contract off their books and pivot toward a full rebuild. They should be bad for a few years, so it’ll be fun to watch how they navigate through the draft and bring this group back to relevance.