Bradley Beal has agreed to a two-year, $32 million contract with the Los Angeles Clippers, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania. — a familiar home for the three-time All-Star as he returns to the court after missing nearly all of last season following surgery to repair a fractured hip.
Beal, 32, has averaged 21.4 points, 4.0 rebounds, 4.3 assists and 1.1 steals in 34.3 minutes per game in his career. Fun fact: He is one of just 64 players in NBA history to average 20-4-4 with at least 500 games played — and one of just 34 to do it with a career true shooting percentage (which factors in 2-point, 3-point and free-throw accuracy) north of .560.
Advertisement
The 14-year veteran was something of a surprise addition to the open market, after he declined the $5.6 million player option he held for the 2025-26 season. Beal had inked a two-year, $11 million contract with the Clippers last summer after agreeing to terms with the Phoenix Suns on a buyout of the final two years of the $251 million extension he’d signed with the Washington Wizards in the summer of 2022.
That buyout — which saw the Suns waive-and-stretch $97 million worth of salary, putting a dead-cap hit of $19.4 million on their books through 2030 — marked the end of the infamous no-trade clause that Beal used to steer himself to Phoenix when he left D.C., that caused so much consternation as the Suns tried to find an off-ramp when the hoped-for Beal/Devin Booker/Kevin Durant big three didn’t pan out, and that led to a pact inked by a former All-NBA selection being widely referred to as the worst contract in the entire league.
The hope, when Beal agreed to that buyout and took a massive haircut to join the Clippers, was that he’d be able to rehabilitate his image by replicating his Phoenix production — 17 points, 3.3 rebounds, 3.7 assists and 1.1 steals in 32.1 minutes per game on 50/39/80 shooting splits — at a significantly lower price point alongside Kawhi Leonard and James Harden on a Clippers team that entered last season with designs on contending for a title. Those best-laid plans were almost immediately scuttled, though.
Beal opened the season on a minutes restriction to manage knee inflammation. He missed time early in the season with lower back soreness and a left knee injury, and struggled when he was on the court, shooting just 38% on 2-pointers while looking like a target defensively. And then, in the second quarter of his first game against the Suns since leaving Phoenix, he suffered the hip injury that would end his season before it ever really got started.
Advertisement
“This is a very, very fluky injury,” Clippers president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank said at the time. “The surgeon said it’s almost like the equivalent of if you were in, like, a car accident. It’s an atypical kind of basketball injury. It’s more of an acute trauma-type injury.”
The hope now, after surgical repair and many months of rehabilitation, is that Beal can once again approximate the sort of smooth-scoring three-level offensive play that had made him such an enticing prospective addition in both Phoenix and L.A. If he can put the hip, knee and back issues behind him, Beal could provide offensive punch both on and off the ball, filling a number of roles — running pick-and-roll, working in the dribble handoff game, running the floor in transition, spotting up on the weak side opposite the primary action, etc. — on any given offensive possession. In a lower-usage, lower-responsibility role, it seems possible that his overall play and production might perk up. (How well he’d hold up defensively after this latest injury, of course, remains to be seen.)
It’s tough to expect that level of production and availability, though, from a player who hasn’t played more than 53 games in six years, and who hasn’t played beyond the opening round of the playoffs since 2017. That’s why a player with Beal’s résumé and gifts finds himself on the market in the first place — and why the Clippers brought him back again at a discounted rate, hoping that he’s a low-risk lottery ticket that can provide an outsized return on their investment.
Read the full article here
