The Suns‘ big three appeared to be nearing full health earlier this week, but the trio’s regular season debut will be delayed until at least December. Star guard Bradley Beal is dealing with a low back strain and will be reevaluated in three weeks, the team announced today (via Twitter).
After being acquired this summer by the Suns in a blockbuster trade, Beal was forced to miss his first seven games with the club due to low back issues that were previously diagnosed as spasms. He debuted last Wednesday and appeared in three games, but admitted he aggravated the injury in Sunday’s contest vs. Oklahoma City, referring to it his back “a little tight.”
The initial sense was that the tweak wasn’t too bad. Beal was listed as probable to play on Wednesday against Minnesota, and with Devin Booker due back from a calf strain that night, it looked like Phoenix’s three stars – Beal, Booker, and Kevin Durant – would all play together for the first time this fall. However, Beal was downgraded to out in the hours before tip-off and now will require a longer layoff to rehab the injury.
Beal didn’t quite look like his usual self in his first three games as a Sun, averaging 17.3 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 3.7 assists in 28.5 minutes per night with a modest .391/.333/.688 shooting line. Entering this season, he had averaged 22.1 PPG on .460/.372/.823 shooting in 695 career appearances.
Once everyone is available, the Suns are expected to have one of the NBA’s most dangerous offenses, headlined by three players who typically rank among the league’s top scorers. But even assuming Booker and Durant stay healthy for the foreseeable future, it will be at least a few more weeks before Phoenix is at full strength.
The thing about all these super teams being unstoppable, is that they’re never all healthy to play together.
Except the Clippers, and that’s going smashingly well so far…
Wizards might wind up winning this trade getting anything for a player who’s only been healthy for 2 seasons of his entire career and won’t play over 60 games for 5 straight seasons probably.
All the wizards got was stuck with Poole…
Still better than Paul and Beal have been to this point. At least he’s available. Plus the pick they got looks better the more GS struggles.
“Still better than Paul and Beal have been to this point.”
Wizards are 2-9. Pretty sure they could have achieved that record with or without Poole.
But they’re doing it without paying Beal $50 million dollars. Not like the Wizards have any delusions of contending this season so I’m not sure what your point is
Yeh, “only” paying Poole $30M/yr is so much better. Safest bet is there won’t be a winner from this trade, but to pretend the Wizards won by ending up with Poole is laughable
*Poole plus a bunch of seconds, multiple pick swaps, and what looks like a guaranteed lottery pick at present. Given that Poole is still young and might be tradeable in future seasons, that looks better than a $50 million guy with a no-trade or a washed and unhappy CP3. Acting like losing isn’t exactly what the Wizards want at present is also weird.
Dude is made of paper.
5 SRPs seems like an overpay now.
Those pick swaps might come in handy for the Wizards if this keeps up. I expected the Suns Big 3 to be injury-prone. I did *not* expect it to be constantly coming up from the jump.
22.1 ppg in 695 games Is truly outstanding; already over 15,000 career points… Who can question Beal’s career?
Wonder if he uses the same doctor as Ben Simmons?
Well they have one thing in common – Kevin darant. Kind of odd how the guys he doesn’t want to play with “disappear”…
So,Beal is very Injury prone, the money the Suns in there all in mode has been catastrophic! It seems to be more likely that Beal is going to be mostly not playing this year! This puts more pressure on Durant, who has his own break down issues. Now, so this also puts more pressure on Booker playing more minutes, not to mention his own tendency to get hurt. The whole suns roster is bogus!
Right now all NBA players are injury prone/time management… Nobody plays 82 games anymore…they are lucky if they can play 50+ games…