What Will Phoenix Suns Do With Bradley Beal?

If the Phoenix Suns are truly stuck with Bradley Beal, Jordan Ott and his staff are going to have to find a way to utilize him more effectively than the last two coaching staffs were able to.

The Suns dealing Kevin Durant may mark a merciful end to the Big 3 era. Coupling that with the fact that rostering three max players in the apron era is below suboptimal, and you begin to realize that Phoenix may have jumped into something too quickly and with little foresight.

With recent reports suggesting Phoenix will either trade Beal or buy him out, according to John Gambadoro of Arizona Sports, the Suns may not have to be stuck with Beal much longer.

If it does come to a buy-out and the front office is hesitant to absorb that much cash (Beal is making $53.7 million next season and has a $57.1 million player option the season after), then yes, they may be stuck with him next to Devin Booker and Jalen Green, which isn't an ideal fit.

Two things were evident in last two seasons of Beal, Durant and Booker; Beal had a difficult time staying on the floor, and when he did, his fit next to the other two stars just never made sense.

Is that just an obvious surface level roster problem, though? Or was the 13-year veteran simply not optimized properly under the last two coaching regimes being third fiddle? Can you blame Frank Vogel and Mike Budenholzer for Beal's shortcomings? How can he be fixed under Ott and, presumably, without Durant?

Let's dive in.

Where did the Beal fit go wrong?

My biggest gripe with how the Suns operated schematically over the last two seasons has been on the offensive end. Yes, Phoenix had a horrific defense last season, but it would be too easy to pick on that.

If you watched the Suns' offense, especially under Budenholzer, you'd maybe notice that it lacked a few key factors that make a good-to-great offense in the modern era -- organization and movement.

I long quibbled with Budenholzer's "random" (as he put it all season) offensive ideology all last season. To be fair to Bud, his meaning of random doesn't exactly mean throwing the ball out there and seeing what happens. It meant maybe initiating an offense with some organization and then, if nothing materializes from the first action, assuring the five guys out there are moving with purpose on and off the ball.

Yes, movement. But there rarely was any, because he didn't stress it. And how could you when you have three of the most notorious isolation scorers in the league? Because you'd expect one of the three to have the ball after the first action failed -- which it often did -- and with around 10 seconds remaining on the shot clock, which is just enough time for either of the three -- and it was rarely Beal if they shared the floor -- to get into their bag and get a bucket.

There's the lack of organization, and it plays right into the lack of movement. Whenever a play would break down and Phoenix would go into its "random" offense, three players off the ball would so very often just stand around the arc and hope to be passed the ball. Opposing defenses knew for a fact that once the initial offense was finished, an isolation shot was coming shortly thereafter. Defenses didn't have to work.

How could Beal fit with Booker, Green?

That was a long-winded was of saying this: Beal works best in a system that requires him to move off the ball. The year he averaged 31.3 points per game (his last great year) was next to Russell Westbrook and as a true shooting guard who would cut, move and screen off ball. There has been none of that the last two seasons. And it's as an amalgamation of Beal's rank as a third option and plain lack of offensive creativity.

Ott, Phoenix's third coach in as many seasons, stressed in his introductory press conference the importance of player and ball movement and how integral it will be to his system. A scheme that will elevate every player on the floor so long as their are able and willing to fulfill their roles.

Beal can thrive under Ott.

If they don't trade him or pull off a historic buyout, Beal will be slotted back into a third option role. In order to remain even remotely competitive, Beal must be optimized. There's a quite simple solution to the Bradley Beal problem (health notwithstanding).

And, hey... maybe you boost his trade value along the way. It can surely only go up from here.