Bradley Beal finally made his much-anticipated regular season debut for the Phoenix Suns, immediately slotting into the starting lineup in place of Eric Gordon to give Kevin Durant a bonafide co-star in the midst of Devin Booker's lower-body injury-related absence. Beal, however, did not have the best of nights in his return to the hardwood. Against the Chicago Bulls, Beal was pressing a bit, missing plenty of makeable shots en route to a 3-12 shooting night, going 0-6 from inside the arc as he finished with 13 points in 24 minutes.

Beal, who was in the Suns' lineup for the final 15 seconds of regulation with a chance to tie the game, ended up missing the entirety of the overtime period due to a precautionary minutes restriction imposed upon him by the team. After all, it wasn't too long ago that Beal's back injury was a “concern” for the Suns.

At the very least, even if it was frustrating for Bradley Beal not to be out there for the Suns in the most crucial five minutes of the contest, he's leaving the medical opinion to the professionals because if he had his way, he'd be playing as many minutes as he possibly can.

“I can be hard-headed and go play 30 minutes when I know I'm not supposed to,” Beal said in his postgame presser, via Jamal Collier of ESPN. “But how will I feel after that? Probably not the greatest. So that's why I lean on our staff and our doctors to be the voice for me.”

That is good restraint from Bradley Beal, especially when the Suns still managed to pull out a 116-115 win over the Bulls in overtime even without the All-Star guard on the hardwood. Nevertheless, Beal's impact throughout the game did not go lost on Kevin Durant, who knows that Beal is only going to become a more dangerous threat the more he puts his back injury in the rearview mirror.

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“Tonight, he just got his feet wet. He's on a restriction minute-wise, but as he comes off of that he's going to be more and more confident. We've just got to give him the ball more,” Durant said of Beal.

With a matchup against their archnemesis Los Angeles Lakers on the docket for Friday, there may be no better time for Bradley Beal to bust out his All-Star form even when he's still facing a minutes cap.