NBA Trade Rumor Loitering: Beal, Butler, and... Boucher?

A look at trade discussions and who's screwed more, Miami or Phoenix.

Photo by Dmitry Ratushny on Unsplash

I’m not an insider, I just hear stuff like a lot of people do. I’m not inside the rooms, I’m just loitering on the outside. Here’s an update on what I’ve heard from just outside the door.

There are 25 days until the NBA trade deadline. The temperature is starting to rise for teams to get the work they know they need to do done, and to do so under the confines of the boa constrictor that is this CBA.

All eyes are on Phoenix and Miami, of course. In a lot of ways, the Suns have put themselves in a worse position.

The Heat can work with Butler to send him home if he stops being unreasonable. The Suns are stuck after benching Bradley Beal and signaling to him that they want to trade him (despite him saying they haven’t spoken to him directly).

Can you get this thing back on the rails if you can’t get a deal done in 25 days for Butler? Does trading for Butler get this back on the rails?

Miami is supposedly bringing back Butler this week at the end of his suspension. That seems like a dangerous idea. Butler is an unstable element. You’re three games over .500. Butler said last time he would be engaged and then detonated everything.

We’ll see what happens. Meanwhile, here’s what I’ve heard around from just outside the door of being an insider.

---

Beal said last week that he “holds all the cards,” and, well, yeah. Hey, the next time someone has a chance to give Bradley Beal a no-trade clause, or really anyone who isn’t a first-ballot Hall of Famer you would always want on your team?You should rethink it, especially if there is a new CBA on the horizon. Just a pro-tip.

So the question becomes four-fold:

• Who has the cap and/or contracts to absorb Beal, including teams that are under the second apron since those teams can’t aggregate players (put multiple players together) in a deal, and could only be traded for a 100% match on Beal’s contract?

• Who is willing to even entertain the idea of taking him on, depending on what else they get back?

• Which of the teams that fit the first two categories will Beal accept a deal to? Spoiler alert: our guy is not going to want to go somewhere cold where he isn’t contending. You better have nice weather, a contending team, or both. (And no, Miami doesn’t want him, they already passed.)

• What other teams can fill the gaps?

---

Miami, reportedly, doesn’t want any long-term big contracts back, they want to clear the books. (Presumably to once again chase the neon rainbow of a superstar in free agency.)

I wonder if that outlook changes should they get an actual sub-star back. I don’t think Beal is it (again, they already passed) or LaVine (they could have arranged that deal several times. But can they talk themselves into Bam, Herro, and another B-tier superstar?

I just think it’s hard for Riley to walk away from hopes of contention at this point in his life.

---

Do you know who else doesn’t want long-term contracts?

Chicago.

Talks between Denver and the Bulls stalled out for Zach LaVine because implicit in the deal for Denver was moving Zeke Nnaji. Just in order to make the deal work, the Nuggets needed to include Nnaji. Also, Denver is if not desperate then extremely hopeful someone will take Nnaji’s contract.

Nnaji has the fifth-highest contract per year on the Nuggets. It’s like if Luke Kornet had the fifth-highest contract on Boston. Wait, no, scratch that, Kornet is actually in the rotation. It’s worse.

Chicago wisely is not willing to trade one big problem (Vucevic or LaVine’s contract) for several medium-sized ones. They’re also, you know, cheap.

But if you can get into this deal with Michael Porter Jr. going either to Chicago or somewhere else and someone else taking Nnaji, maybe there’s a deal to be done.

But with Miami and Chicago both resistant to taking on money, it means you have to add more teams which gets more complicated.