Would the Atlanta Hawks Actually Trade for Bradley Beal?

A quick look at a recent opinion piece in Bleacher Report about the Atlanta Hawks being interested in trading for Bradley Beal.

At age 25, Bradley Beal just had the best season of his career with the Washington Wizards. Now, in a recent piece by Greg Swartz of Bleacher Report, the gifted scorer has been linked to the Atlanta Hawks as a possible trade target.

Right off the bat, this seems like a pie-in-the-sky deal, as the parameters of it laid out by Swartz in Bleacher Report feature the Wizards getting two notable pieces of the Hawks’ young core in return.

Here is the deal as laid out by Bleacher Report.

As you can see, both Kevin Huerter and Cam Reddish are included in the deal as well as the lottery-protected Brooklyn Nets draft picks acquired in the Taurean Prince trade during the offseason.

While that might be quite a price to pay, Beal is a truly stellar player that would definitely make the Atlanta Hawks a legitimate threat in the lower reaches of the Eastern Conference, though he would not likely push the Hawks over the edge.

Beal produced some striking career-highs last season, his 7th with the Wizards. Beal logged career-highs in minutes (3028) and minutes per game (36.9), both of which led the NBA. Beyond that, Beal averaged 25.6 points per game, 5.5 assists per game, 5.0 rebounds per game, 1.5 steals per game and 0.7 blocks per game according to Basketball Reference. All of those numbers were career-highs.

Obviously, there’s no doubt that Beal would make the Hawks a better team in the short-term, but is it time to mortgage the team’s future for a quick one- or two-season playoff run? The short answer: No.

Atlanta Hawks General Manager Travis Schlenk, Head Coach Lloyd Pierce and Team Governor Tony Ressler seem content to let this play out as a full rebuild, and sending away a player that the team literally just drafted at #10 overall (who Trae Young is a big fan of) seems immensely short-sighted.

Though an interesting idea, as Beal has long been a favorite of this writer, this fake trade is purely in the realm of fantasy for next season.