New York Knicks forward Josh Hart is clearly not too impressed with what the Washington Wizards did on Sunday.
The Wizards shipped guard Bradley Beal to Phoenix in exchange for a package including guards Chris Paul and Landry Shamet. Notably, the trade does not see Phoenix send any first-round picks to Washington, though there is a picks swap involved.
That last bit certainly shocked Hart. The Knicks wing had a fairly incredulous reaction to the terms of the deal from Washington’s perspective.
They didn’t get a single 1st rd pick??
— Josh Hart (@joshhart) June 18, 2023
Plenty of people probably had the same reaction that Hart did upon seeing these terms. The Suns, however, do not really have any picks to give. They already traded their first-round picks in 2023, 2025, 2027, and 2029 to Brooklyn to acquire Kevin Durant, and the so-called Stepien rule requires teams to have at least one first-round pick in every other draft, leaving Phoenix’s hands tied.
Some might suggest that perhaps the Wizards should have found another team that could offer a more compelling package of picks. Beal’s full no-trade clause, however, severely limited what Washington was able to do. If the Wizards made a mistake, it was inserting that clause into Beal’s contract last summer, which gave the player all the leverage a year later.
