Bradley Beal, #3, Washington Wizards, (Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images)
The Washington Wizards’ playoff hopes were riding squarely on the shoulders of guard Bradley Beal, but a bum shoulder has ended Beal’s season prematurely.
Per Shams Charania, Bradley Beal will not travel with the team down to Orlando for the season’s resumption, as he is still nursing a rotator cuff injury. This comes just a few days after Beal himself expressed sincere doubt over if he was going to join the team down in Florida.
According to the Wizards, Beal had been playing through the rotator cuff injury for most of the season. If anything, that makes his remarkable 2019-20 season even more unbelievable.
Bradley Beal is a major loss for the Washington Wizards.
Beal has long been considered one of the best shooting guards in the league, but he made the leap from star to superstar this season after averaging 30.5 points, 4.2 rebounds, and 6.1 assists per game despite the lack of a second star next to him.
After Latvian sharpshooter Davis Bertans also opted out of the NBA’s restart, Gonzaga rookie Rui Hachimura stands as the team’s highest remaining scorer after averaging 13.4 points per game. Troy Brown Jr. and Moritz Wagner will likely need to shoulder more of the scoring with Beal out.
The Wizards’ first game in Orlando will come on July 31 at 4:00 p.m. when they take on Devin Booker and the Phoenix Suns.
The Wizards already had an uphill path towards the postseason, but losing one of the game’s most automatic scorers just a few weeks before the NBA’s restart has to be a near-fatal blow for Washington. The one guy who made Scott Brooks’ squad both tolerable to watch on TV and a challenge to plan for given how he can single-handedly take over games has ended his 2020, and every other NBA team that has Washington on their new abbreviated schedule has to be thrilled.