Suns considering making major decision on Bradley Beal

Beal was the subject of trade rumors throughout the 2024-25 season, and those rumors have carried over to the offseason. However, the $110.8M he’s owed over the next two years have made it extremely difficult to find a trade partner, and the no-trade clause Beal holds further limits the Suns’ leverage, since he would need to approve any move.

As a result, a buyout has been viewed as the most likely path to a split between Beal and the Suns this summer.

If Beal is willing to give back some of that $110.8M, it could also open the door for Phoenix to use the stretch provision to spread his remaining cap hits over the next five years instead of two, like Milwaukee is doing with Damian Lillard. That would create significant short-term savings for the Suns — an estimated $230M, per cap expert Yossi Gozalan — by taking their team salary from above the second tax apron to all the way under the luxury-tax line.

NBA rules prohibit a team from carrying waived-and-stretch salary that exceeds 15% of a season’s salary cap. Since the cap for 2025-26 was set at $154,647,000, that means no club can have more than $23,197,050 in stretched dead money on its books. Stretching the $110,794,880 owed to Beal across five seasons would result in cap hits of $22,158,976 annually, but Phoenix already has $3,814,041 in stretched salary on its books related to last year’s cuts of Nassir Little and E.J. Liddell.

In order to legally stretch Beal’s contract, the team would need him to give up at least $13,879,835.

If Beal were bought out, any of the NBA’s other 29 teams could legally sign him. The Collective Bargaining Agreement prevent teams operating over the tax aprons from signing a waived player if his pre-waiver salary exceeds the value of the non-taxpayer mid-level exception ($14.1M this year), but that rule only applies to players waived and signed during the regular season.

If the Suns were to use the stretch provision on Beal’s salary, they would be ineligible to re-sign him until July 2027, after his contract would have expired.