In a trying season, Beal seeking silver lining
BIRMINGHAM, MICH. — Bradley Beal is searching his phone to show video of the moment. It’s his son, Bradley II who’s affectionately nicknamed “Deuce,” saying dada clear as day. And just look at his mouth, Beal says, turning the phone to his audience. He’s not even 7 months old and he has four — four! — teeth already.
Now, Beal really starts to brag. Deuce goes to sleep by 7:30 every night, and isn’t fussy like other babies. When you place him on his belly, he starts to crawl. The doctor says he’s in the 100th percentile in height, so he should be taller than his all-star dad.
“He has something to look up to and beat one day,” Beal says.
Inside a boutique hotel north of Detroit, Beal sits among a lunchtime crowd of business travelers in his gray Washington Wizards warm-ups, and he’s happy. It’s not just because he thinks his son is dominating other infants in motor skills milestones. Beal is surging past his peers, too.
He has averaged 25.1points, 5.4 assists and 5.1 rebounds this season, one of only seven players in the league to reach 25-5-5 a night. No other guard in the Eastern Conference has more 20-plus point games this season. Recently, he topped 1,000 made three-pointers in his career to become the youngest to do so in NBA history (25 years, 223 days).
Yet, this isn’t what defines Beal’s second consecutive all-star year. His greatest achievement may be keeping perspective and hunting for every silver lining possible in this train wreck of a season.
“I feel like this year I’ve had waymore fun just enjoying the game,” Beal says.
Beal’s word choice might sound perplexing to most people. What’s so “fun” about falling 10 games below the .500 mark before the All-Star break and striving for the eighth spot in the Eastern Conference as though the fate of the city depends on it? Basketball purgatory may also continue since his all-star backcourt teammate John Wall is expected to miss the next 12 months, and possibly more.
Even in the months before Wall’s injury, in which team officials say he TV: Radio: slipped and fell in his home bathroom after undergoing surgery to remove bone spurs in his left heel, this Wizards’ season had splattered all over the cold, hard tile.
The team had been remade in the hopes of bringing peace to the locker room, so during the summer, center Marcin Gortat, who had been at odds with Wall, was traded for Austin Rivers. The Wizards also added Dwight Howard and Jeff Green for veteran help. But the new roster, with six rotational players on expiring deals, had chemistry issues. During a mid-November practice, tempers flared among players. Beal and Rivers verbally spared, Wall and Green got into it — and Wall hurled an expletive at coach Scott Brooks. By the end, when the players gathered for an impromptu clear-the-air session, Beal blew up.
According to several people, Beal yelled something along the lines of: “I’m sick of this [expletive].” Beal indicated that he had been dealing with it for seven years, then gestured toward team president Ernie Grunfeld, who was sitting on the far baseline, and said, “It starts at the top.”
Private frustrations became fodder for the public, and months later, Beal regrets that the story leaked. He doesn’t want anyone to take his words as a direct shot at Grunfeld — “It wasn’t to embarrass him in front of everybody,” Beal says — and he thinks he could have worded some things a bit better. Still, Beal doesn’t take back the intent of his message.
“We have to start winning. Whatever that looks like, whether that be topdown, whether that be just guys in the locker room, whether that be coach getting on us more, whatever it may be, we need to do it and win,” Beal says, months later. “What we’re in here arguing about or mad about it, it’s irrelevant if we don’t win. I feel like that was my whole point in saying what I said. I’m not a loser. I hate losing. I hate losing more than I like winning.”
Teammates have heard Beal loud and clear this season.
“When he speaks up, he’s usually right. It’s definitely needed when he speaks up,” Chasson Randle says. “He is our leader, mostly by example, but when he speaks up it’s like, all right, we’ve got to respond.”
As Beal accepted the news about Wall, he buckled in and played that night as Washington’s last standing All-Star. The Wizards lost to the lowly Atlanta Hawks, then Beal went home to his sleeping son. Before the sun came out the next day, Beal had settled his mind.
He remembered the mountain-sized chip on Wall’s shoulder and how if anyone can come back the same after such a devastating injury, it would be him. And Beal thought about the team. His team. For the near future, the Wizards will be his to lead and it’s a responsibility he accepts because somebody has to find joy in the gloom.
“I feel like, this year has been a challenge in many ways,” Beal says, but then also: “I feel like my role in being a father and embracing who I am and embracing every situation I’m in, it’s helped me and propelled me through it all.”