Getty Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant against Knicks
Word in New York City is that the Brooklyn Nets may have interest in Bradley Beal.
According to the New York Daily News’ Stefan Bondy, Brooklyn is in the market for a third star to compliment Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving.
In his report, Bondy notes that the Nets have internally discussed avenues of acquiring Washington Wizards shooting guard Bradley Beal.
Beal signed a two-year, $72 million extension with the Wizards last year.
But will he stay in D.C.? Before signing her extension with the Wizards, I’m told Boston Celtics GM Danny Ainge did have interest in Beal.
GettyBradley Beal, Wizards
“Obviously Bradley Beal is a name that makes sense if you put him together with KD and Kyrie,” New York Daily News’ Kristian Winfield told me on a recent episode of the Scoop B Radio Podcast.
“That’s a championship trio right there. But what’s it going to take to get him and if you just look around the league, there’s not many options out there. All the other stars are paired up in duos across the league. Are you going to try and get Donovan Mitchell? – probably not. The Jazz ain’t trading him. Are you going to get Jimmy Butler? – He’s not going anywhere, he’s in Miami right? It’s not a lot of options out there and that’s another position the Nets are in. You can trade Caris LeVert but, who are you going to get that really makes a difference there, right? I’m not sure you get someone better than Caris that another team is willing to part ways with so, Caris is in an interesting spot. I do think that they can put it together. They’re going to take that next step in Caris’s inconsistency, he’s probably going to bulk up a little more so he can defend his position more efficiently and we solved the step that we needed to see from him this year which was him hitting that 3-ball lights out. I was in the middle of writing a story on them and then the season went down. He said he used the time when he injured his thumb to really look at different ways to improve his jump shot and he came out of that thumb injury shooting better than 40% from three. So if he can carry that into next year, then the Nets have at least one 3-and-D playmaker, now you need another one – because when you’re building around two superstar players among the league’s highest-paid players and on a Wizards team with a low ceiling. that quelled trade rumors but Washington (24-40) is again lottery-bound.”
Beal’s Wizards are 24-40. At season’s end, Washington will be a lottery team.
While some think that Beal would be a fix, what about Nets swingman, Caris LeVert? He’s not chopped liver.
“That’s interesting,” Kristian Winfield tells Scoop B Radio.
“I think Caris has another step he needs to take and that step is being consistent. Because he’ll go off for 30, and have 7 one night, and then the next night you can’t find him on the floor. And he’ll even say that too. He’ll be like: ‘The next step for me is consistency. Being someone who I can be counted on and go out there and do this on a night to night basis.’ That was tough for him because you want him to be that guy and score 37 on any given night, but how do you do that when you’ve got two guys that can get you 50 on any given night, right? So the season has been kind of sort of trying to figure where he fits in, trying to pick his spots. And the numbers even said that he so much better this season without Kyrie on the floor than he does with him, but that’s the natural of having a guy that a- you’ve never played with before, they’ve only played 20 games together if you think about it and even then they were still kind of injured in that same period of time. They both got hurt on that West Coast road trip where Caris got hurt in Phoenix and he got hurt in the game in New Orleans. But I do think that there is potential for that to be a ‘Big 3’ maybe a ‘Big 4’ – I don’t know if you call DeAndre Jordan part of that…I mean, the way he’s been playing and continuing moving that ball and protecting the rim, then sure. But, Caris LeVert embodies the crossroads that the Nets are at right now and I wrote this shortly before the season shut down – is that Caris LeVert is still an emerging star. He’s not a star yet. And we don’t know if he’ll get to that star level because it’s still undetermined. He could regress tomorrow. We all could regress tomorrow because we don’t know what tomorrow holds, but we know what we have right now and Caris is somebody that can…a- who can create for others and create for himself, he’s a crafty defender – he may not be the best one-on-one defender but he plays the passing lanes like nobody else and you kind of want to bet on his potential.”
Through 39 games played this season, LeVert has averaged 17.7 points, 4.1 rebounds, 4.1 assists and 1.1 steals per game.
The coronavirus pandemic halted play in the NBA on March 11 and the Brooklyn Nets are 30-34.
Brooklyn sits in third place in the NBA’s Eastern Conference.