12:35pm: The extension is official, according to a tweet from the Wizards.
7:42am: The Wizards have reached an agreement on a two-year contract extension for All-Star shooting guard Bradley Beal, reports ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. According to Wojnarowski, the deal will be worth just shy of $72MM, the maximum amount the team could offer.
Beal’s current contract pays him approximately $27.1MM in 2019/20 and $28.75MM in 2020/21. His new extension will start at 120% of his ’20/21 salary, which works out to a $34.5MM figure for 2021/22. According to Wojnarowski, Beal’s 2022/23 salary ($37.26MM) will be a player option.
In total, the Wizards’ star will be in line to earn about $127.6MM over the next four years — or he could opt out and hit the free agent market after three seasons, when he’d have 10 years of NBA experience under his belt and would qualify for a maximum salary worth 35% of the cap.
“This will allow him to do another deal while he’s potentially in his prime,“ Beal’s agent Mark Bartelstein said of the extension, per Candace Buckner of The Washington Post (Twitter link).
The Wizards first offered Beal a three-year, $111MM+ contract extension back in July, but the 26-year-old indicated he wanted to take his time and evaluate the team’s direction under its new management group before making any decisions. As Wojnarowski points out, Beal’s decision to re-up with Washington – even on a short-term extension – represents a “spectacular victory” for team owner Ted Leonsis and new general manager Tommy Sheppard.
“Brad has always made it clear to me, that in a perfect world, he would never leave Washington,” Bartelstein told ESPN. “He has felt an obligation to be the focal point in turning the Wizards into an elite team. He’s thrilled about all the resources that Ted is pouring into the franchise and thrilled how committed (Leonsis) and Tommy are to building something special.”
Wojnarowski reported last week that the Wizards were willing to do an extension for Beal “in any form” he wanted, and it appears the team stuck to that promise. Besides being a one-plus-one extension rather than a three-year deal, Beal’s new contract also features as 15% trade kicker and a 50% advance on his 2021/22 and 2022/23 salaries once the extension begins, as Bobby Marks of ESPN details.
Perhaps most importantly, signing this extension will make Beal ineligible to be traded for the 2019/20 season. Contract extensions that exceed the league’s extend-and-trade limits ensure that a player can’t be traded for six months, so by the time Beal becomes eligible to be dealt, the February trade deadline will have passed.
Teams around the NBA had viewed Beal as the most likely star player to become disgruntled and become a trade candidate in the coming months, given the Wizards’ lottery expectations for the ’19/20 campaign. However, Washington insisted throughout the offseason that the former Florida Gator was unavailable. Clubs hoping to make a run at Beal will have to wait until at least the summer of 2020 to try to change the Wizards’ minds.
Beal, who has played all 82 games and made the All-Star team for two consecutive seasons, had a career year for the Wizards in 2018/19, averaging 25.6 PPG, 5.5 APG, and 5.0 RPG with a shooting line of .475/.351/.808. He also played an NBA-high 36.9 minutes per contest.
While Beal may not lead the league in minutes again in 2019/20, he’ll be leaned on heavily once more with star point guard John Wall expected to miss most or all of the season as he recovers from a torn Achilles.
Speaking of Wall, he and Beal both now have guaranteed contracts for the next three years, with player options for 2022/23. In 2021/22 – the final guaranteed season for the star guards – they’ll be earning nearly $79MM combined.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Hey BB…can I get a small loan
Makes him even more valuable to trade once he gets disgruntled.
Could also make him the most expensive player on the trade market this summer if team goes south.
Can hear Wall trade rumors cranking up now.
Will rebuild around Beal for the future, no doubt about it.
Agreed, with two years left locked in for the team will be quite valuable.
Good job by the DC front office in getting this done. I thought for sure Beal was on the move.
Great news that Beal is gonna stay all season in DC instead of been traded halfway through the season, hopefully with him & returning Wall & Hachimura they can build something interesting in there.
Rui is projected as starting according to a previous HR article, and a duo with Bryant should be fun to see, even if Rui isn’t quite ready. But here’s what the opposite of “fun to see” is: “reinfection problems”… I doubt Wall returns.
Bovada projected 26 wins; I took over because Beal would stay and the young team would stay up and nobody would talk about tanking.
I’m surprised a 50% advance for two years worth of salary is legal.
I may not have worded that well — I think the idea would be that he’d get 50% of his 2021/22 salary up front at the start of that season and then 50% of his 2022/23 salary up front at the start of the ’22/23 season (if he opts in).
But even that allows for transferring more money than is allowed by the CBA, considering the fronted money can be reinvested for profit.
I would have expected to hear more about advanced money options before now, if it was an option.
I admittedly haven’t dug too deep into payment-schedule stuff (since it doesn’t affect teams’ caps), but here’s what Larry Coon’s CBA FAQ says about salary advances:
“No salary can be paid before July 1 of the season in which it is earned, but players can be advanced some their salary before the first league payday on November 15. Except in the case of a minimum-salary player, the salary advance is limited to either 80% of the player’s guaranteed salary, or 50% of his base salary, whichever is less. In addition, no more than 25% of the player’s base salary can be paid prior to October 1.”
So it sounds like Beal’s 50% advance is the maximum allowed by the CBA.
If this is the case Washington need to try give Beal a better chance of winning by getting in some better players.
Ian Mahinmi and a protected first for Denis Schroder
Washington could also do with Imam Shumpert (can start at SF while Miles is out) and maybe Melo. As a secondary scorer Melo would be pretty good.