Lillard, Beal Staying Put: What Now?
For the past several weeks trade rumours involving Damian Lillard of the Portland Trail Blazers and Bradley Beal of the Washington Wizards ran rampant. Pundits attempted to gaze into their crystal balls to guess where both All-Star guards would be when the 2022-2023 season came around.
At one point, many NBA fans were all but certain both Lillard and Beal would leave their respective teams for contending teams.
Lillard Signs Two-Year Extension
After weeks of speculation, the world finally knows the answer: Damian Lillard is staying in Portland through 2027, at least on paper.
Lillard and the Trail Blazers agreed to a two-year max contract extension. The extension will see Lillard earn $120M. Reports indicate Lillard will pick up the player option he has for the 2024-2025 season. The new deal also has a player option for the 2026-2027 campaign as well.
Although limited to just 29 games during the 2021-2022 season, Lillard still put up solid numbers, averaging 24.4 points, 7.3 assists, and 4.1 rebounds in 36 minutes per game. While his field goal shooting percentages dropped to career-low numbers, a healthy Dame is a scary Dame.
Now that Portland appears to have averted the Lillard crisis, the Blazers must now work to continue surrounding the six-time NBA All-Star with more talent. However, given the new max contract Dame just received, there will be less room to operate with for the franchise that missed the playoffs for the first time since Lillard’s rookie campaign.
Beal Staying in the Capital
Like Damian Lillard, Bradley Beal’s future was a hot topic of conversation of late. Whether or not he would remain a Wizard for the 2022-2023 season and beyond was debated on sports talk shows ad nauseum for weeks. While Beal repeatedly indicated that he wanted to win in Washington, some believed he would ultimately opt for a team that had better chances of winning a championship.
Then, the Wizards and Beal agreed to the second-largest super max contract in history: a whopping $251M deal. The five-year contract also has a player option for the 2026-2027 season.
While Beal’s decision to sign an extension makes the fans happy, some NBA front offices remain sceptical it will work because it contains something rarely seen in an NBA contractr: a “true” no-trade clause.
This clause is simple: the Wizards cannot trade Bradley Beal anywhere he doesn’t sign off on. Should Washington wish to trade Beal during his new contract, Beal must agree to the deal for the trade to materialize. While we’ve seen more than our fair share of verbal NMC in contracts, where front offices will work with players to find a suitable destination, very rarely is the clause actually put in writing.
Not only did Washington give Beal the second-largest contract in history, this no-trade clause also puts the team in a disadvantageous position. What will happen if things don’t work out and the Wizards want to move on from Beal, but he doesn’t agree? A deadlock. Whether this pans out long term for DC or not remains to be seen.
What Now?
Now that Lillard and Beal are staying put with their respective squads, teams that were reportedly in the mix for the two guards are back to square one.
Lillard and Beal’s decision to stay put will mean less headlines, although we still have a Kyrie Irving and a Kevin Durant situation in Brooklyn to keep the talking heads happy. At the very least, the Blazers and the Wizards can start preparing for the future with their respective stars returning for another tour of duty.
However, even though Lillard and Beal signed multi-million dollars worth of contracts, there is no guarantee both will be with their current teams by the time those deals ultimately wind down. With the player empowerment era in the NBA in full swing, the players ultimately hold more power than ever before. And in Beal’s case, he has that in writing to boot.
-Iggy Gonzales
Photo: All-Pro Reels. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.