Where does Bradley Beal stand on NBA player rankings?
Where does Bradley Beal stand on NBA player rankings? It’s time to rank players for the next season! After free agency ends each year, media outlets all over the world rank the best players in the NBA. They can also be a helpful way to compare players from different teams in the league. So, no matter how you feel about a list of the top 100 players, if a lot of a team’s players are on that list, it’s probably a pretty good team.
Where’s Bradley Bead on the List?
The first player rankings are starting to show up on the internet, and so far, they show that Bradley Beal had an off-beat year. All of this is related to what Wizards president Tommy Sheppard announced immediately following the conclusion of the 2021–22 season. Before the team re-signed Beal to a supermax contract for five years, this was the case.
What Sheppard Said
Sheppard could tell that a lot of people were about to give up on Beal after he played a career-low 40 games and shot a career-low 30% from three last season. “I see stuff about Bradley and I kind of wonder, my goodness, are we talking about the same player? He’s a special player, one of the best at his position in the NBA,” Sheppard told him.
Listing and More
The Athletic recently made a list of the top 125 NBA players by putting them into tiers. Beal was in the 3B tier and was listed 32nd out of all NBA players. The year before, Beal was in the same tier, but he was 24th on the list. That might have been a slight since Beal had just been named to the All-NBA team, which is made up of the top 15 players in the league.
Another list from recently might surprise you. Hoops Hype made a list of the best shooting guards in the NBA, and Beal is sixth on the list. He’s behind Devin Booker, Donovan Mitchell, Anthony Edwards, and Zach LaVine. Beal just signed the second-biggest contract in the NBA, but this site lists him as the sixth-best player at his position.
Seeing that list does show how many good players are in the NBA right now. Even though shooting guard isn’t the best position in the league, there are still a lot of good ones. LaVine, for example, scored 24.4 points per game on average last season and made 38.9% of his three-point shots on 7.1 tries per game. For the fourth-best shooting guard in the league, those are great numbers.
Guards – Who’s the Best?
Even though there may not be much difference between the best two guards, Beal’s play from just two years ago would probably put him much higher than sixth. He averaged 31.3 points per game and shot 48.5 percent from the field, which was the best of his career. But that was two years ago, and Beal will have to prove he can get back to being that player.
Beal’s Contract
By giving Beal a new contract this summer, the Wizards showed that they believe he can do just that. They are counting on the fact that Beal has been one of the best scorers in the league for a much longer time. He averaged 23.2 points in 40 games last season, but he averaged 28.7 points in 199 regular season games over the three years before that.
Sheppard said at the same off-season press conference that he thinks Beal will show anyone who doubts him wrong. “It’s not a revenge tour or anything like that, but he wants to reassert that ‘hey, I’m one of the top players in the league.’ The only way you can do that is come back, get results and put up points. That’s a challenge he’s relishing,” Sheppard said.
Beal’s Ranking
Mike DePrisco of NBC Sports Washington ranked Beal as the 19th best player in the league. That’s a lot better than 32nd overall and sixth among shooting guards, but Beal could make that look like a mistake if he plays as he did in 2020-21.