RADIO
Amidst the weirdness and struggles of what has been this Washington Wizards season, it's been easy to not notice that Beal has quietly been having a really good stretch as of late. Over the last seven games, Beal is averaging 27.9 points per game to go along with 5.3 assists and 4.6 rebounds. He's shooting 48.7 percent from the floor. In the games before that stretch, Beal was scoring just 21.6 points per game on the season.
Let's look at some data and video and talk about how Beal has been playing at this level and if we can trust him moving forward.
And, since the Trevor Ariza trade dropped, let's also take a little time to talk about how that may or may not affect Beal.
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Bradley Beal: Deep Dive
Background Information
We all know that things have been messy in Washington this season. A team that's seemed to be perennially destined for the fifth seed in the East every season in the recent path and the near future has instead faltered terribly to the tune of an 11-18 start to the year. They aren't done; their recent trade for Trevor Ariza can be viewed as proof that they actually think they're going to sneak into the playoffs, though they're extremely unlikely to make much noise when they get there.
Beal has been extremely consistent this season, scoring under 16 points just once all year (a 12 point outing against Portland in November). He hasn't shot under 30 percent from the field a single time. There's been a level of consistency to Beal, and lately he's taken that a step farther with the aforementioned seven game stretch.
Speaking of consistency, Beal's numbers this year look a lot like his numbers last year. Last year, he took 18.1 field goal attempts per game; this year, he's taking 18. Last year he averaged 4.4 rebounds and 4.5 assists; this year, it's 4.3 rebounds and 4.5 assists.
Game Tape
Beal scored 31 points against the Nets on Friday. Let's look at some videos from that game.
While a lot of Beal's numbers look similar to last year on the surface, there are some interesting changes when you dig deeper. One of those comes with where Beal is taking his shots.
Beal is taking 25.4 percent of his shot attempts inside of three feet, the highest percentage of his career, and he's connecting on 72.2 percent of shots inside of three feet, also the highest mark of his career. And overall, 45.3 percent of his twos are coming off assists, up from 35.5 percent last year. We're seeing more of Beal doing what we see above: getting the ball close to the hoop off of passes from a teammate.
Meanwhile, here's a good example of the kind of shot Beal gets that helps him stay so efficient. John Wall inbounds to Beal at left wing, where he's guarded by Joe Harris. Beal gets a well-timed and well-set screen that helps spring him towards the basket, and he ends up making a floater in the lane.
If we're looking for some troubling signs, Beal's three-point shooting has been a little rough this year. After shooting 37.5 percent from deep last year, he's down to 34 percent this year, his lowest mark as an NBA player. In theory, that should bounce back. Beal is struggling a lot this year on catch and shoot threes in comparison to previous seasons, and the law of averages says that he'll end up looking a lot more like the normal version of himself over the course of the season. Still, we're far enough into the season to at least be a little worried about it.
Enough shooting. Let's look at some Beal assists:
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Beal has posted an assist rate of 20.4 this season after posting one of 21 percent last year, which was a decent leap from where his numbers were at before that. At the same time, John Wall has seen his raw assist numbers decrease over the past two years as the Wizards have spent more time putting the ball in Beal's hands. Having more ball handlers in the modern NBA isn't a bad thing, and the above clips give us some good ideas of how Beal can be effective dribbling inside and then passing back out to the perimeter.
Part of this has been driven by the fact that John Wall has finally developed a semblance of an outside game over the past couple of years. While he's barely over 30 percent from three this year, he shot 37.1 percent on 4.1 attempts per game last year, and being able to use Wall off the ball as a catch and shoot option adds a lot of wrinkles to how Beal can be used.
The Fantasy Impact
Let's talk about that trade first.
Per Basketball Reference (and I want to note that they're notorious for being a little off in their player tracking), Beal has spent 82 percent of his minutes at the two and 15 percent at the three this year, while Ariza has spent 62 percent of his minutes at the three and 38 percent at the four. There's not much overlap there, and with both Austin Rivers and Kelly Oubre Jr. gone, Beal's minutes shouldn't be affected by the deal. Ariza slides nicely into those 26 minutes vacated by Oubre, though he should be in the starting lineup with Tomas Satoransky moving back to the bench.
It's not quite easy enough to just compare how many shots left the team to how many Ariza usually takes because that ignores a lot of other factors, but if we were to do some analysis on that level, it would look something like this:
Kelly Oubre Jr.: 10.5 field goal attempts per game in 26 minutes = 0.4 attempts per minute
Trevor Ariza: 8.7 field field goal attempts per game in 34 minutes = 0.25 attempts per minute
The obvious first conclusion: Ariza shouldn't end up with more usage than Oubre was getting, and thus he shouldn't cut into what Beal does. Even with Otto Porter Jr. due back soon from a knee injury that caused him to miss a couple of games, Beal shouldn't see much of a change in how the team uses him. Maybe if the Wizards run out a Thomas Bryant/ Trevor Ariza/ Otto Porter Jr./ Bradley Beal/ John Wall starting unit we see a little less from Beal while that lineup is on the floor, but even that would likely even out over the course of a season.
Overall, fantasy owners should be happy with Beal's production, and they could see it bump up higher based on his recent play, especially if his three-point shooting corrects itself. The addition of Trevor Ariza shouldn't be anything for fantasy owners to worry about at this point. A bigger concern would be if Beal found himself on the trade block, but the Ariza trade suggests this team is all in on accomplishing something this year, making it less likely they move Beal and go into rebuilding mode.
