Despite injury setbacks, Bradley Beal is flourishing in his new role as the primary ball handler in the Suns high-powered offense. Beal, acquired from the Wizards last Summer to pair alongside Devin Booker and Kevin Durant, spoke about his new role in an article series with Andscape entitled “Bradley Beal Diary”. The series features Beal's takes on the season on and off the court and shares interesting revelations about his time with Phoenix.
“Sacrificing has been something I’ve embraced. It’s not easy, 100%. It takes a lot of work. It takes kind of training your mind to do something that you have been used to doing for so long. But I enjoy it. I feel like, especially with the dynamic that we have here, we have so much versatility, we have so much firepower, I take a lot of joy in that because I’ve never had this type of ammunition before. I’ve never been surrounded with this caliber of talent. For me it’s a joy to be able to share the floor with guys like that.”
He spoke highly of several of his teammates, including Grayson Allen and Jusef Nurkić.
“Grayson [Allen] is one of the best shooters in the NBA. Get him the ball. D-Book is a killer mentality. Give him the ball. KD is a killer mentality. Give him the ball. Eric Gordon was one of my favorite players growing up. And now I get to share the floor with him and watch him still make over 2,000 threes in his career and continue that number. It is awesome to be a part of this group. I play with another dominant big that I can add to my list of bigs that I’ve played with in Nurk [Jusuf Nurkić]. It has been a joy. It has truly been a joy. I’ve been known as a scorer all my career, but to be able to embrace more of a point guard role and being kind of our defender at times, I can get a joy in that. It’s like a new challenge for me.”
In 43 games played this season, Beal is averaging 17.9 points per game and 5.1 assists. The Suns have been 3-2 in the last five games with a loss against a Victor Wembanyama-less Spurs team. In the five-game stretch, Beal is averaging 13 points per game but his assist average over the slate of games has increased at 8.2 per game. Beal addressed how having a solid team and depth is important, especially when he, Booker, and Durant aren't scoring at their usual high clip.
“Everybody wants us [Booker, Durant, Beal] to all go score 30 a night in a perfect world. But we realize that won’t happen. I think it was a game the other night, three points the other night. We won a game and I played some pretty good defense that night. It happens. I think KD shot the ball nine times the other night — which should never happen, by the way — but it happened and I think we won the game. So, it is a very fine line. We can look at it through that lens and kind of go with the opinion of the whole world and the expectation of what everybody has for the situation, or we can embrace who we are as a team and embrace our versatility and embrace the need of everybody and not just Beal, Booker and Durant.”
The Suns are set to play the defending NBA Champion Denver Nuggets on tonight at 10 PM EST. The game will be broadcast on ESPN.
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