'We couldn't chance it': Why the Suns and Bradley Beal finally came to terms

MARK AND JOSH Bartelstein have heard the basic jokes a hundred times.

"Boy, with that [player name] situation going on, that next family barbeque/holiday/party is going to be weird, eh?" Well, sometimes the truth is stranger than low-hanging humor.

On Wednesday, Mark Bartelstein, the CEO of Priority Sports, finalized a whopping $99 million buyout agreement with his son, Phoenix Suns CEO Josh Bartelstein, for star client Bradley Beal, ending what had turned into a monthslong saga.

On Thursday, they will celebrate Josh's 36th birthday in Chicago. This weekend, there is a huge Bartelstein family wedding, as Mark's daughter and Josh sister, Courtney, is set to be married to her fiancé, Max.

"Yeah, there's going to be some jokes when I get the mic," Josh Bartelstein told ESPN. "My mom and grandmas are going to love it."

After the wedding, Mark Bartelstein is expected to finalize a contract for Beal to join the LA Clippers in a two-year, $11 million deal, he told ESPN's Shams Charania, that completes a spectacular offseason for the team and ends a disastrous two years for the Suns and Beal.

THE END OF Beal's tenure in Phoenix came in three acts.

1) After new head coach Jordan Ott was hired in early June after a protracted search, he met with Beal and presented him a plan for how he could be used next season, sources said. Beal is coming off a season in which his usage rate was the lowest of his career, his role diminishing under former coach Mike Budenholzer, who even took him out of the starting lineup for a six-week stretch.

Beal's stats still presented well; he averaged 17 points and shot nearly 50% overall and just under 40% from 3-point range. But playing on a maximum salary, at $50 million, and with the team woefully underachieving, that production didn't match the expectation, or the cost.

Ott, in his sales pitch to Beal, indicated the Suns had not totally given up on the concept of bringing him back next season. With two years and $113 million left on his contract and a no-trade clause -- which had totally undercut the Suns' ability to deal him last winter -- such a concept wasn't surprising.

Beal appreciated Ott's efforts, but after postseason meetings with Bartelstein assessing the situation, he had already decided that he needed to move on from Phoenix, if the opportunity presented itself.

"We couldn't take the chance [of another lost year]," Mark Bartelstein told ESPN. "This decision was about basketball. Bradley wants to play in big games and in big moments."

2) On June 22, the Suns agreed to trade superstar Kevin Durant to the Houston Rockets.

The return included 23-year-old guard Jalen Green, whom the Suns determined to be a new cornerstone of their perimeter next to Devin Booker.

Before taking the Rockets offer, the Suns had in-depth discussions with the Minnesota Timberwolves about moving Durant and sought a package that included star center Rudy Gobert, guard Donte DiVincenzo, promising forward Terrence Shannon Jr. and the 17th pick in this year's draft, sources told ESPN. Had that deal come to fruition, there was a place for Beal in the lineup, and the Suns might've made it a priority to keep him.

But Durant had made it known that the Wolves were not on his short list of preferred teams. And with just one season left on his contract, Durant had leverage. The talks faded. The deal the Suns made with Houston skewed young and, with Green, left Beal with a role that was undefined, at best.

Soon after, the Suns gave Beal and Bartelstein permission to speak to other teams about joining them via buyout, the best signal yet that the Beal era in Phoenix was ending. More than 20 teams showed interest, sources said. Eventually Beal met, via Zoom, with half a dozen teams about how he might fit with them.

3) On July 7, the Clippers traded starting shooting guard Norman Powell to the Miami Heat in a three-team deal that landed them a new starting power forward, John Collins from the Utah Jazz.

The Clippers were one of the teams that had already shown interest in Beal and were on his short list. When the Powell deal happened, talks accelerated, sources said. Clippers owner Steve Ballmer and head coach Ty Lue, who as a native of Mexico, Missouri, has a long relationship with St. Louis native Beal, spoke to Beal about what the Clippers could offer.

But the key voice came from James Harden, who lobbied the Clippers' front office to chase Beal and then reached out to him directly to make the sale, sources said.

Harden played in 79 games for the Clippers last season, logging the fifth-most minutes in the league at age 35. He made the All-Star team and the All-NBA squad, but also wanted to ease his burden going into next year and believed Beal could help.

The pitch was multifaceted, sources said. The Clippers finished the regular season 18-3 before going out in seven games against the Denver Nuggets in the playoffs. The agonizing Game 4 loss, when Aaron Gordon threw down a dunk a tenth of a second before the buzzer for the win, left the team bitter, but optimistic.

Harden sold Beal on the Clippers' depth and talked about how he would work well with Powell, who had a career-best season playing alongside Harden after replacing Paul George in the starting lineup last season.

He outlined how the Clippers had embraced and helped him pivot in his career after disappointing runs in Brooklyn and Philadelphia damaged his reputation. Beal, coming off a disappointing run in Phoenix that had similarly stunted his value across the league, could relate.

Harden even took the unusual step of speaking with Mark Bartelstein after all parties, including Harden's agents, approved the conversation. Recruiting a star peer is commonplace in the NBA; recruiting another agent to get on board is not.

"No one wants to be released. There's heartache with that," Mark Bartelstein said. "But Bradley wants to be in a position where no one remembers he got released, that they'll remember how he plays next season."

THE SUNS USED the waive-and-stretch provision to swallow the $99 million owed to Beal over the next five years, which means that money will sit on their cap, at $20 million a season, until the end of the decade.

It is a brutal position for the team to be in, especially because the Suns don't control their first-round draft pick through 2031. It's extending a mistake deep into the future, when it could haunt them in ways they can't even conceive of yet.

But the Suns pushed themselves to the decision for several reasons.

The first, and easier to understand, is money. Over the past two seasons, Suns owner Mat Ishbia had spent $620 million in salary and luxury taxes, and the team didn't win a single playoff game. Being expensive is one thing. Being expensive and losing is quite another, regardless of how deep-pocketed the owner might be.

Waiving Beal saves the Suns a whopping $175 million this season just in luxury tax, a figure so enormous that it alone could justify spreading the cap pain out over the next five years. When combined with the savings on salary just this season, the maneuver took more than $210 million off the team's balance sheet.

Though the Suns will have to eventually pay Beal the entire $99 million, the annual $20 million payment in the later years of the deal will likely represent a much smaller percentage of the salary cap than it does now. This sounds good in a PowerPoint presentation, but it might be tough to accept some 50 months from now.

Still, this move got the Suns out of the second and first aprons, freeing them to utilize all the roster-building tools that they would be locked out of because of their wild overspending. Between the second apron rules and Beal's no-trade clause, the Suns' inability to address their failed roster was crushing. What they did receive in buying Beal out was this flexibility, even though they are still limited by having traded so many draft picks over the past few seasons.

And there was the Green addition, who the Suns believe will pair well with Booker.

"[We] brought in one of the rising stars in the NBA in Jalen," Suns general manager Brian Gregory said after the trade was finalized. "His athleticism and natural ability are off the charts. Jalen has already proven his commitment to putting in the work that excellence requires, and we believe that his approach to the game will allow him to further unlock his incredible upside here in Phoenix."

Getting to the decision was one thing. Making the deal was another. The Suns needed Beal to leave at least $13.9 million from his remaining two seasons to make the buyout legal under league rules. The Suns were right up against the maximum 15% of the salary cap allocated to bought-out players and needed Beal's cooperation.

The Suns had hoped to get Beal to leave more money on the table than just the $13.9 million. Talks went back and forth and got heated, sources said. Ultimately, Beal left the least amount possible to make the waiver work, to the penny.

"There were some intense conversations," Mark Bartelstein said.

BEAL AGREED TO sign with Clippers for about $5.4 million this season, every penny they had left in their midlevel exception after giving Brook Lopez a two-year deal starting at $8.7 million earlier in July.

Beal will lose a little bit of money than what he had guaranteed, but with a player option that will allow him to become a free agent again next summer at age 33, he's hoping a productive year in Los Angeles will enable him to recoup it and more.

Beal's numbers last season felt underwhelming at his $50 million salary, but if he comes close to duplicating them for the Clippers, costing 90% less, it's an unmitigated success story.

When L.A. entered contract talks with Harden after the season, both sides understood the need to further add to the roster. Harden ultimately agreed on a new two-year deal for $81 million with a player option for next season.

Harden's $39 million salary this upcoming season, a $6 million raise from last year, left the full midlevel exception available for the Clippers to use. Then he helped recruit players such as Lopez and Beal into those salary slots.

In the end, the Clippers turned Powell and their midlevel exception into Lopez, Beal and Collins this summer, building the depth they sought. With Collins in the final year of his contract, at $27 million, and the Clippers holding team options on Bogdan Bogdanovic, Nico Batum and Lopez, they are in position to have enough cap space to offer a maximum contract next summer, if they so choose.

Beal and Harden, both of whom have those opt-outs, are incentivized to have big seasons. Kawhi Leonard is coming off his first healthy summer in years and, per team president Lawrence Frank, kept doing full workouts into June after the playoff loss to prepare his body for a deep playoff run next season.

Best-laid plans have frequently turned into nightmares for the Clippers this decade. But on a day when the Suns and Beal were trying to rationalize and mitigate their losses as their breakup was formalized, the Clippers were the ones quietly landing value.

And just in time for the rehearsal dinner.