Please stop trying to turn Bradley Beal into the Suns' sixth man

Attention to all the Gretchen Wieners of the Phoenix Suns fandom: Bradley Beal coming off the bench as the team’s sixth man is so fetch.

And by that, I mean (in the most Regina George voice possible): Stop trying to make “fetch” happen. It’s not going to happen.

It’s only natural for some fans to fall into this trap. Last year didn’t go according to plan. It was largely joyless, despite boasting a 49-win season and a Big 3 of Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal. The team suffered a humiliating first-round sweep in the playoffs, and Beal’s dreadful performance in Game 4 — 9 points on 4-of-13 shooting with 6 turnovers while fouling out — left a bad taste in everyone’s mouths.

Unlike Book and KD, Beal didn’t have a gold medal redemption tour with Team USA over the summer. And now that Phoenix has added a true point guard in Tyus Jones and promised him a starting job, someone from last year’s starting lineup has to move to the bench.

It won’t be Book, the face of the franchise, or KD, Phoenix’s best player from last season and a living legend who covers for the Suns’ lack of wing depth behind him. And it won’t be Jusuf Nurkic, since the Suns need a starting center out there.

That leaves Bradley Beal and Grayson Allen. No disrespect to Allen and the sensational first year he had in the Valley, but we really don’t need to galaxy brain this by suggesting it should be Beal who gets moved to the bench. ESPN’s Bobby Marks may have said it best on the PHNX Suns Podcast a few months back.

“I understand where Phoenix is as far as continuity and everyone says, ‘Well, you gotta break up these three guys.’ No, you don’t,” Marks said. “Like, this is who you are, right? This is who you are for right now, and you kind of have to see it through here.”

Setting the record straight on Bradley Beal

Make no mistake about it: Last season wasn’t the year that Bradley Beal wanted for himself either.

“In retrospect, we won 49 games,” Beal said during his exit interviews. “That’s a lot of games. And I missed what, 30 games, almost? Roughly? Roughly 30 games. Like, that’s a lot of games. We’re a 50-win team. Not saying we’d have won every game if I’d have played, but we would be in a totally different position if I’m healthy through the whole year, if everybody’s healthy the whole year.”

Beal missed 29 games to be precise, but it was the disjointed nature of those injuries that leant to that frustration. He missed the first few weeks of the season with back problems, came back for three games, and then re-aggravated his back, missing another month as a result.

Once Beal returned, he landed on Donte DiVincenzo’s foot in his third game back, sidelining him for another two weeks with an ankle injury. When he returned and actually stayed healthy for six weeks, it was no coincidence the Suns had their best stretch of the season, going 19-7 from Dec. 27 through the All-Star break.

But Beal also broke his nose and hurt his hamstring right before the break, forcing him to miss nearly three weeks before returning to finish out the season.

So yes, it was a bummer for the Suns’ $46.7 million man to only play 53 games. This team will need him to be healthier this season in order to build continuity for a legitimate playoff run, let alone a title run. But because of Beal’s poor injury luck, gaudy paycheck and abysmal Game 4, the misconception that he was “bad” when he was actually on the court seems to have taken root in the desert.

To clarify, viewing Bradley Beal as anything less than the Suns’ third-best player — by a mile — is ludicrous. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, but there are opinions, and then there’s just being wrong.

Despite a season that was completely disjointed by his own injuries, a team trying to build continuity under a new head coach, and a role that fluctuated throughout the season based on whatever the team needed, Beal still put up an 18-5-4 stat line on a career-high 51.3 percent shooting from the field and a career-high 43.0 percent from deep.

For the “Beal’s numbers weren’t good enough for a guy making that much money!” crowd, only two players in the NBA — Kristaps Porzingis at 20.1 points per game and CJ McCollum at 20.0 points per game — averaged more than Beal’s 18.2 points per game as their team’s third-leading scorer (min. 50 games).

So even if we were to ignore the crucial context that someone in that Big 3 needed to take a back seat (and how it was never going to be Durant or Booker), Beal was still the third-best “third option” in the NBA. And that was all while navigating a constantly shifting role that saw him take on point guard duties, serve as Phoenix’s lone driver and even embrace lead defensive assignments.

Bradley Beal vs. Grayson Allen

Let’s say your argument for moving Bradley Beal to the bench revolves around making the rotations more well-rounded. There’s a fair case that Booker and Beal’s skill-sets overlap, that bringing Beal off the bench would empower him as a super-powered sixth man, and that Allen’s 3-point shooting would ensure the Suns aren’t losing too much firepower in that starting five.

I don’t mean to sound rude, but why do you want to bench the Suns’ third-best player, again? And which teams’ third-best player comes off the bench anyway? This isn’t the same NBA that saw James Harden win Sixth Man of the Year for the Oklahoma City Thunder, and if you recall, it wasn’t long afterward that Harden showed everyone he was a legitimate superstar on a new team.

Forget about how unrealistic it is for the guy making $50.2 million next year to get benched for the guy on a $15.6 million salary. Because even if we take salary and reputation out of the equation, going from Beal to Allen in the starting lineup is a downgrade in almost every way:

• Bradley Beal: 18.2 PPG, 5.0 APG, 4.4 RPG, 51.3 FG% (13.9 FGAs), 43.0 3P% (4.4 3PAs), 33.3 MPG
• Grayson Allen: 13.5 PPG, 3.0 APG, 3.9 RPG, 49.9 FG% (9.1 FGAs), 46.1 3P% (5.9 3PAs), 33.5 MPG

And none of this is a slight at Allen! But even coming off a career year where he shot the hell out of the ball, he’s still a highly effective role player who both benefitted from the Big 3’s gravity and rewarded them for their trust on the wide-open 3s he got as a result.

According to The BBall Index, Allen ranked in the 94th percentile in openness rating on his 3-point attempts, and he made a blistering 45.6 percent of his catch-and-shoot 3s. The starting lineup would definitely benefit from Allen’s floor-spacing and 3-point efficiency!

But the drop-off in the shooting department from Allen to Beal is nowhere near as severe as one might think. Beal only ranked in the 69th percentile in openness rating, but still made 43.6 percent of his catch-and-shoot 3s. Beal can also create his own offense, put pressure on the rim as a driver, or draw the defense’s attention as an active cutter and constant off-ball mover, which puts him on a different playing field than “high-end role player.”

In an NBA that prioritizes versatility and shot creation, overlapping skill-sets are okay if the skills in question are “shooting,” “ball-handling,” “on-ball creation,” “off-ball scoring,” “bucket-getting” and “secondary playmaking”! Sure, the Suns’ starting lineup will be undersized, but starting a 6-foot-4 Grayson Allen over a — wait for it — 6-foot-4 Bradley Beal solves literally nothing in that respect.

And for those advocating for Royce O’Neale to start over Beal and Allen, then there’s a backcourt logjam to deal with. How is Mike Budenholzer supposed to find minutes for Beal, Allen and Monte Morris if all of them are coming off the bench? And how fast does Phoenix’s wing depth dry up if their only two proven wings — KD and O’Neale — are suddenly starting together?

Anything goes with the rotations come playoff time, but for the sake of regular-season balance, it makes the most sense to start Tyus Jones, Bradley Beal, Devin Booker, Kevin Durant and Jusuf Nurkic, with Monte Morris, Grayson Allen and Royce O’Neale being staggered in.

The difference between staggering the Big 3 and minimizing their best lineups

The lineup data from last season suggests that starting Beal is the way to go too. According to NBA.com, when the Big 3 shared the court, they boasted a 120.5 offensive rating and a +6.6 Net Rating together. When it was Booker, Allen and Durant sharing the court, Phoenix had a 119.0 offensive rating and a +5.4 Net Rating — still great, but not quite as good.

Splitting up the Big 3 shouldn’t be the goal. The numbers show that — plot twist! — the Suns were at their best when their three best players shared the court, rather than any configuration that only included two of them:

• Booker on, Durant on, Beal on: +123 in 790 minutes
• Booker on, Durant on, Beal off: +74 in 670 minutes
• Booker off, Durant on, Beal on: +37 in 285 minutes
• Booker on, Durant off, Beal on: +25 in 125 minutes

Phoenix will already stagger the Big 3’s minutes so that 1-2 of them are on the floor at all times. So why split them up at the beginning of games instead of trying to start and close halves as effectively as possible?

Playing their three best players together helps with that, and Budenholzer shouldn’t overcomplicate things by trying to convince anyone that Beal and the team are actually better off with Beal as the world’s most overpaid super-sub. Instead, Bud’s challenge will be devising an offense that allows his new floor general to feed Booker, Beal and Durant.

If the goal is promoting more motion, playing random and taking more 3s, having Beal’s gravity out there will put opposing defenses in a true bind when Jones and Nurk pick-and-rolls are flanked by the Big 3. There are understandable concerns about what Beal’s role will look like now that Jones, Booker and KD will have the ball in their hands, but the Suns can leverage Beal’s cutting, spot-up shooting and secondary creation with the starters, and they can still find pockets to let him be more assertive.

When it comes to empowering Beal and letting Grayson benefit from the spacing of that starting lineup, subbing Beal out early for Allen makes sense, since Beal could then cook at the start of second and fourth quarters while Booker rests. Or better yet, they could sub in Allen for Tyus Jones to give last year’s starting five of Booker-Beal-Allen-Durant-Nurkic some burn together, since that group boasted an absurd +11.1 Net Rating together. Then Bud could sub in Monte Morris for Beal so that a more traditional point guard could set the table for some of the bench-heavy groups.

Giving Beal more of the reins with bench-heavy groups is perfectly fine, but the Suns don’t have to bring him off the bench to do so. By simply starting the Big 3 together and then staggering their minutes, they can give Beal opportunities to be the main or second option, all without saddling him with the same point guard duties he struggled to fill last year.

The Suns aren’t overreacting after one disappointment

We’ve gone through the various reasons it’s too early to label the Bradley Beal trade a mistake, and the Suns’ lack of panic over this move extends to any overreactive takes about suddenly bringing him off the bench.

“You look back at some of the trades that James and all of us were part of, right? We do those things 100 out of 100 times,” Mat Ishbia said in his end-of-season availability. “Not 99 out of 100, 100 out of 100, and we’d still do ’em again, and I think the other 29 GMs would do the exact same thing.”

Whether you agree with Ishbia’s assessment is irrelevant, because Beal isn’t going anywhere thanks to his salary, injury history and a no-trade clause that allows him to veto any potential trade. The Suns aren’t interested in trading him, but even if they were, it’s highly unlikely he’ll be on the move anytime soon.

“It was never, ‘We’re gonna win a championship this year or we gotta blow it up,’ like this crazy stuff, this just ridiculous stuff,” Ishbia said. “So yeah, would I have liked to have won it this year? Absolutely. But I do think continuity, consistency, process works, and guys playing together. One of the things we talked about at the beginning of the year is, can we get our guys to play 60-65 games together, the starting five? I think we played less than 40, right? That continuity does affect it.”

Inserting a more traditional point guard (and another undersized guard in general) changes the equation for the starting five, but it shouldn’t be Beal who is once again asked to change his role. Everyone in the rotation will have to sacrifice in some respect, but there’s a difference between adapting for the sake of the team and putting good players in difficult positions.

If the Suns want to get the best out of Bradley Beal, it’s time to give him a more concrete, consistent role, without overreacting to one disappointing season where he was nowhere near as bad as advertised. Bringing him off the bench…isn’t that.