Wizards reportedly moving quickly toward Bradley Beal trade; Heat, Suns frontrunners

After years and years of waiting for Washington to launch Bradley Beal trade talks, the new Wizards management started down that road and negotiations have quickly picked up momentum. This trade could come down before Thursday’s NBA Draft.

The Miami Heat and Phoenix Suns are the two teams in the mix — a mix Beal controls because he has a no-trade clause and will only waive it for the team and trade he likes — reports Shams Charania of The Athletic.

Why are talks moving quickly? Because of a fear from the Wizards that Beal might not be the best available player in a couple of weeks, and the Heat in particular might look elsewhere. If the Trail Blazers can’t trade the No. 3 pick and Anfernee Simons (plus maybe more picks or players) for a star to put next to Damian Lillard, then Portland and Lillard may sit down to discuss their future. To be clear, as of right now, the Trail Blazers have zero intention of trading Lillard, they are going all-in on rebuilding around him, something league sources have continually repeated to NBC Sports, and something myself and Sean Highkin of the Rose Garden report discussed on the latest PBT Podcast. Lillard is most likely a Trail Blazer to start next season.

As we discussed on that podcast — and echoed by Marc Stein in a Saturday update of his newsletter — Miami would like to wait on a trade for a few weeks, just to see how things shake out with Portland (technically speaking, Lillard could not be traded until July 9, although a deal could be agreed to before then). Washington sees that and is pushing to get a deal done now, just in case. Lillard today is a superior player to Beal and it’s not particularly close (Lillard was Third Team All-NBA this season, averaging 32.2 points and 7.3