The best version of Bradley Beal would be a perfect fit on this Los Angeles Clippers team. His scoring pop and offensive creation would provide an injection of life into a team that traded away last year's breakout star, Norman Powell, in the offseason. Only one problem — what is the best version of Bradley Beal in 2025?
It's certainly not the version we've seen so far. In five games, Beal has scored 37 points on 39 field goal attempts. It's been rough pretty much every time out for the 32 year-old scorer. These struggles won't last forever.
But it's definitely not the All-NBA version of Bradley Beal from 2020-21, either, and any Clippers fans who convinced themselves of that are quickly learning a hard truth. The new version of Bradley Beal can't be relied on to score 20-plus per night. In fact, he probably can't be relied on to score 15 a night. He'll eventually start playing far better than he is now — but Beal's nightly ceiling might be lower than we realized.
Misery loves company, I suppose, and it's not only Beal who has struggled for the 3-5 Clippers, who just got stomped by Beal's former team, the Phoenix Suns — but I don't think that's particularly comforting for Clippers fans.
Bradley Beal was on the buyout market for a reason
Name recognition will get you far in the NBA, and we're dangerously close to having a conversation about whether Bradley Beal can provide anything more for this Clippers team than jersey sales.
I'm not all the way there yet. But, despite Beal's stellar past as a scorer, the Clippers did still get him off the buyout market. Yes, that's become more viable of a path for big-name players to take in recent years, but it's still not a great sign if a guy has to hit the buyout market in the first place.
If you have any question how Beal's tenure in Phoenix ended, they were answered quickly on Thursday night, when Suns fans booed Beal every time he touched the ball. That's why Beal's stats from his time there (which are pretty solid, for the record) don't tell the whole story.
If Beal wants to avoid the same fate with another franchise, he needs to find his footing quickly. And he can do that... But even the best results from this experiment might disappoint some fans who expected a star and instead get, at best, a role player.