If someone asks you, you’re at least pausing and thinking about it.

“Was the Bradley Beal trade the worst in Phoenix Suns history?”

It is certainly in the conversation. The ones that always come to mind are the departures of fan favorites like Shawn Marion, Dan Majerle and Dennis Johnson.

A longer elaboration will land on some of the grotesque cost-cutting moves by Robert Sarver, such as using two first-round picks to move off Kurt Thomas’ salary, and trading the No. 7 pick in the 2004 NBA Draft, which could have been Luol Deng or Andre Iguodala, for a second-rounder, a future first and $3 million dollars.

That future first was later used to acquire Thomas. Similar cycles show up when the Suns traded out of the first round in 2006 (for the pick that was Rajon Rondo) for a first-rounder in 2007, which was later packaged with James Jones to dump him in Portland. Worst of all, the Rondo pick was originally acquired in the Joe Johnson trade, one that had to happen because Phoenix wouldn’t pay him a few extra million dollars. Yeah, that Sarver tenure sure was something.

A sleeper pick is the 2015 trade deadline when Phoenix traded Isaiah Thomas right before he went on an insane two-year heater as one of the best players in the world, all while bringing in Brandon Knight as the return in exchange for an ever-hyped Lakers first-round pick. Former GM Ryan McDonough admitted he wanted a mulligan on that one, and Knight went from pretty good to fringe NBA player within two years.

Let me know if the Suns prioritizing a center or the Lakers stumbling into a star sounds familiar to you at all, because dig deeper into Suns lore and you’ll find that they sent away future Hall of Famer Gail Goodrich in 1970 at the age of 26 to the Los Angeles Lakers for center Mel Counts, who averaged 8.2 points and 4.9 rebounds in two seasons with Phoenix.

So, after a short review, does Beal belong in that company?

Absolutely.

The Beal acquisition put short-term handcuffs on the Suns, moving them into the second apron. It had additional long-term shackles because Phoenix inexplicably had to add swap rights on three first-rounders that could really come back to bite them.

We knew the gamble that was at the time. And yet, some of us were still onboard, as opined in this space previously. Hindsight makes that seem moronic. Hold that thought for a few.

The most bizarre part of this saga is if we were in the summer of 2023 ahead of the first full season of Devin Booker and Kevin Durant together, and I told you I could swap out Chris Paul for a guard that would go on to average 17.6 points, 3.9 rebounds, 4.3 assists and a steal per game on 50.5% shooting and 40.7% from 3, you’d ask where to sign, right?

Beal’s individual production was there. Everything else was such an all-around abhorrent mess that those numbers do not matter at all. Not even a little bit.

Let’s get to this before we go too far into analyzing the carnival of errors and tossing deserved blame at Beal — this trade by the previous front office was one of the worst misreads in the history of Valley sports.

The value in a vacuum was fine. Paul was not going to fetch anything of substance on the trade market. Phoenix could have waived-and-stretched him to open up the non-taxpayer midlevel exception for someone around Paul’s level, but it’s more about how the Suns wouldn’t have been committed to a potentially treacherous long-term salary in Beal while being subjugated to the second apron. Even then, the talent drop-off would have been drastic, from either Paul to that midlevel player or Beal to that.

The evaluation had to start and end with how Beal could coexist with Booker in a backcourt. Both the players and then-head coach Frank Vogel did not respond to questions about their coexistence like it warranted much significance. Their shrugs made it feel like a simple, accepted truth: Whomever got the outlet pass would bring it up, they’d alternate in other spaces and the pace/movement of the offense would take care of the point-guard-sized-hole from there.

Vogel mismanaged the hell out of this, acquiring zero buy-in to an offensive system that had to have some synergy to make an unorthodox pairing become functional. He fumbled Beal’s role throughout the year, eventually declaring him the team’s “point guard” at the turn of the new year to try to spark the duo, a shift that completely rattled Beal and nuked his aggression to score.

That’s on Beal, too. He wasn’t some 20-year-old kid. He was 30 and a decade into the league. On his arrival, Beal spoke on the adaptability he knew he’d have to be versatile with.

It’s not like he proved to be incapable. When he was able to stay on the floor and find a flow, Beal looked like what he was supposed to be. Over a 12-3 Suns stretch that started in mid-January of 2024, Beal posted almost 21 points per game, and his impact went far beyond just scoring. There was 55% shooting and 23 points per game two months later across eight contests and the five-game stretch of 27 points-per-game close to the year that helped Phoenix clinch a playoff spot. He just couldn’t avoid injuries and maintain consistency between them.

This move was not just about the Suns being committed to this backcourt of Beal and Booker. They were so all-in that the pink slip of their car and the deed to their house were in the center of the table. The contract and no-trade clause seamlessly merge together into this Transformer of an immovable boulder.

So for them to sign point guard Tyus Jones in free agency last summer to start, making the fit even more difficult in a tiny three-guard backcourt, it really made you wonder what on Earth Phoenix was doing with Beal. What it signaled was that Booker and Beal could not form cohesion on the floor without a supervisor, also known as a floor general.

It signaled this was, in all forms, cooked.

Perhaps Beal would figure out a way to be a positive contributor. But the grand ambition of a dynamic, hyper-versatile offensive attack led by the hydra of Beal, Booker and Durant was scrapped into the trash after just one year. It was a colossal failure.

The experiment did not work in Year 1, but perhaps following a season of aftershock and adjustments out of the way, Beal would renew his approach to the game. He came into media day speaking on a new philosophy, throwing out his old way of identifying goals for the season, with the lone one to just “have fun.”

Beal, like all of us, got a little too close to the guards at Azkaban over his first year with Phoenix and had a bit too much of his basketball soul sucked away for his liking. He seemed ready to embrace a glue guy calling, fully aware this was not going to be a situation where he could be Batman or even Robin some nights.

But then Beal could never even get back above water, endlessly dragged down by two never-ending sags, his health and trade noise.

Over the course of an 82-game season, Beal spent 11 different segments of it missing time with over a half-dozen ailments. His first year had its share of injuries, but they were at least blocked out into significant chunks so he had some long strings of consecutive action. Last season, Beal only managed to stay on the floor for at least 10 straight games once. He would again show an ability to churn out high-quality performances at times, but no consistency could materialize because of his intermittent availability.

And once a 10-2 start to the Suns’ season fizzled out to a .500 record that featured the scars of the previous season turning into reopening wounds, Jimmy Butler started causing a ruckus in Miami, all to get his way to Phoenix. The only way that was going to work was with Beal going to South Beach.

With the vibes cratering, then-head coach Mike Budenholzer went to the point of no return in early January, moving Beal and Jusuf Nurkic to the bench. It was justified. Phoenix could no longer rely on Beal to stay healthy enough to start and let the starting unit find a rhythm. Beal was asked about the rumor that the benching was to force him to feel unhappy enough to sign off on a trade, and part of his response included that he “holds the cards,” a reference to that no-trade clause.

A Butler deal never materialized while continuing to dominate the news cycle, with Beal’s agent on two separate occasions feeling the need to speak on the record that Beal hadn’t been asked yet to waive the clause. Despite Phoenix’s feverish attempts to trade Beal, it could never find a deal to get far, and the deadline passed without one. Instead, it was the Suns realizing that Durant might have to be the one being traded.

By then, the Suns’ season was over. The team had clearly given in, and an awful February followed.

This is a good time to cover some of that aforementioned blame beyond the injuries.

Beal has a way on the court of displaying body language that is not difficult to discern. You always have a good idea about how he’s feeling.

This did not do him any favors.

Whether it was this whole “why is he always tying his shoes?” thing that sometimes occurred during a live possession, or the time he laughed and smiled at Stephen Curry in a “haha, you got me!” fashion after briefly losing track of him defensively in one of many do-or-die games late in the season, it was just Brad being Brad. And this understandably pissed fans off. It doesn’t feel like a leap to suggest it frustrated coaches and teammates, too.

When Beal would be sulking on the court, he was prone to playing completely aloof basketball that goes multiple levels beyond what we saw from an often-detached Deandre Ayton. This included a lack of movement off the ball on offense, lack of aggression getting to the rim and just half-assed defense in general. Every member of the Suns, yes, even the younger go-getters filled with energy, were offenders.

The difference is Beal was the bellwether of this team, which is the primary reason this submarined so horrendously. All of his supplementary additions as the third star in an air-tight role with little wiggle room would be what pushed the Suns over the top. The X-factor of this entire era of Suns basketball looked more claustrophobic than comfortable when it came to that fit, and the result was a true disaster class.

To put a bow on it, let’s go back to hindsight.

In a helpful way to unearth this, take a look at some bozo’s two articles on why trading for Beal would make sense, because the reasoning obviously must not have come to fruition. And you know, some accountability never hurts.

The first column immediately started with the benefits on offense by saying this new “Big 3” would be contingent on “having to develop chemistry” to figure out the dynamic. On defense, well …

Defensively, it would be contingent on Booker accepting the challenge he more or less did when Durant arrived. He became Phoenix’s second-best defender in the starting lineup and was defending in more high-leverage situations against fellow stars. He passed the test with flying colors.

Not good! Booker regressed quite significantly, to the point where that analysis from two years ago feels inaccurate, even though it’s not. Beal accepted that challenge, for what it’s worth.

As far as roster construction, there was this nugget next: “The Suns would also have to pull a 3-and-D wing out of their hat somehow.” The best Phoenix did was Royce O’Neale and Grayson Allen, who both proved to be far too undersized as the third starter on the perimeter and had their own other limitations exposed at times.

Good looks by writer man noting “there’s still an unknown of serious handicaps in the long term” for salaries and how the second apron was on the way, as well as “all of this once again depends on health beyond anything. The championship gambit starts there.”

If there’s anything to learn here, it’s the “as long as this and that happen” line of thinking that can be problematic.

Take in that lesson if you needed it. The Suns sure do, so it’s time to see if they’ve learned or not.