Over the past week, the Phoenix Suns' ownership and front office came to a conclusion as they considered the idea of trading for Washington Wizards guard Bradley Beal:
Don't just break the rules, smash them to bits.
The NBA's new collective bargaining agreement goes into effect in a matter of days (July 1 to be specific), and it contains a series of new guidelines aimed at breaking up and suppressing NBA superteams.
The most relevant is the salary-spending threshold known as the "second apron," $17.5 million above the luxury tax threshold, which was put in place to deny exactly what the Suns were considering: collecting three or more max contract players together on one team. If a team exceeds the second apron, the rules crush free agency options, trade options and even future-draft-pick options.
The Suns' leadership -- owner Mat Ishbia, CEO Josh Bartelstein, president James Jones and vice president Ryan Resch -- had been thinking about this problem ever since these rules became public in April; the new CBA was a bit of a gut punch to them.
Phoenix had just traded for Kevin Durant in February, sending all of its tradeable first-round picks to the Brooklyn Nets in the process. Two months later, the team-building world had instantly changed on the Suns. Though there was a committee of owners negotiating the new labor deal, individual teams were not consulted and found out about the new rules at the same time as everyone else.
Braced for huge payrolls with Durant, Devin Booker and Deandre Ayton on their books into the future, the Suns faced all sorts of hurdles to avoid hitting that apron. It's one of the reasons they had a meeting with veteran Chris Paul two weeks ago and discussed the option of waiving him because only half of his $30 million salary for 2023-24 is guaranteed.
Then things changed last week when Beal was brought to the trade market after the Wizards decided to start a rebuild under new president Michael Winger. It was a bit like college recruiting; the Wizards had granted the Suns permission to speak to Beal because his no-trade clause enabled him control over the team to which he was traded.
The Suns, and particularly Booker, had become experts at this over the past few years. They appealed to Paul to engineer a trade to Phoenix in 2020. Durant forced his way there earlier this year. In Beal's case, Bartelstein's father, Mark, who is Beal's longtime agent, was controlling the trade process because of the no-trade provision.
In the 2023 playoffs, Booker emerged as the Suns' primary ball handler with Paul playing more off the ball. It unleashed some of the best play of Booker's career as he averaged 33.7 points and 7.2 assists per game on a sterling 59% shooting. That made it clear to the Suns that moving on from Paul, even as well as the 38-year-old guard had performed in the role over the previous three seasons, was feasible. Adding Beal, another multitalented scorer who can handle the ball, made basketball sense.
But the fit on the books was a different matter. Booker, Durant and Ayton are due $116 million this upcoming season and $135 million in 2024-25. Beal's salary averages more than $50 million over the next four years. The Suns would have been around the second apron before even accounting for a fifth starter.
Bobby Marks acknowledges Phoenix improves after acquiring Bradley Beal, but lays out the limitations the Suns face after the trade with the Wizards.
Those salary cap constraints were why the Suns were supposed to bow out of pursuing Beal, saying thanks but no thanks. The midmarket owners who negotiated the new CBA and who wanted to install parity and prevent the massive spending and star clustering, like the Nets, Golden State Warriors and LA Clippers had done in recent years, designed this new system to drop a road block -- and it dropped in Phoenix.
But the more the Suns looked at it, sources said, the more they came to an understanding that if they were going to pierce the second apron, it was better to explode right through it. If they just crept over the line, as they were sure to flirt with anyway based on their roster's current salaries, it would have been challenging.
But if they just went all-in and went way over, their situation might be workable. Go barely over the line, the Suns believed, and it would be hard to make moves in the future. Go way over the line by adding all the talent they could now, and it opens up some options.
Plus Phoenix could get a talent such as Beal at a huge bargain. With Beal controlling the trade, he wasn't going to leave for a team that wasn't contending for a title; however, the teams in the title chase wanting to trade for him were limited by the new rules.
It was a concern, for example, for the Miami Heat, another team that was a possible destination for Beal. So the Suns found themselves in a rare scenario, bidding for a three-time All-Star in a closed market.
By Sunday, the Suns decided they were going for it.
With the support of owners Mat and Justin Ishbia, who have approved massive spending increases since buying the team in February, the Suns decided not to waive Paul. Instead, Paul is likely to get his entire $30 million salary, sources said, and the Suns combined it with guard Landry Shamet to take on even more money by bringing in Beal -- giving them nearly $162 million in salary committed to just four players for the 2023-24 season.
And don't expect them to stop there.
They are likely to try to re-sign free agents Torrey Craig, Josh Okogie, Damion Lee, Jock Landale, Bismack Biyombo and Terrence Ross, among others. They are almost assuredly going to keep guard Cameron Payne, who has a partially guaranteed salary. And they might even try to use a trade exception worth nearly $5 million to acquire another player (they have until February to use that exception).
The Suns were in the luxury tax this season for the first time in more than a decade, which buys them two years before they would face the so-called repeater tax that makes huge spending even more onerous.
Collected together, if there was ever a team that was going to make this Beal move, it was the Suns, and it was now.
Before the new CBA even starts, its core tenet is already being tested. And a brand new superteam is born.