Bradley Beal Is Clearly In The Honeymoon Phase After Calling Devin Booker A Hall Of Famer At His Introductory Press Conference

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Big day today out in the desert. Things started with the latest free agency news of Kyrie Irving planning to meet with the Suns tomorrow even if common sense and basic math will tell you that him joining PHX is about as big of a pipedream as we could possibly have. 

We then move to the Bradley Beal introductory press conference, where Beal had this to say

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The thing to remember with all of these things, not just Beal's, is that at the moment, things are perfect. Players are going to give mostly boilerplate and common PR answers, the vibes are high and rightfully so. Bringing in a talent like Beal is exciting, especially for a team that is built to win now. After years of speculation of where Beal would go, the Suns ultimately won the prize. 

As expected, I'm pretty sure everyone did a double take when Beal said he's going to be playing with two Hall Of Famers, mostly because ya know….the Suns just traded Chris Paul. Of course, he was talking about Devin Booker being that second guy, which on the surface is pretty insane to say, at least at this point of his career.

At the moment, Devin Booker is a 3x All Star with only 1 All NBA appearance. Now that the league is moving to positionless All NBA teams, who knows how many he'll end up making? That doesn't mean Booker sucks, far from it. Farrrrrr farrr from it. But HOFer is a little aggressive for a guy that Basketball Reference currently has with a 1.1% HOF probability. Who knows, if he continues the current run he's on of basically being a 27/6 guy every season for another handful of years I wouldn't rule it out, especially if PHX ends up winning a title (or a few). As of now, Booker is 248th all time in points scored with 12,688, and if he continues putting up around 1,700-1,800 points a season I don't think it's crazy to suggest he'll break that ever important 20K points club. Once you do that, outside of a few guys you're basically a lock for the HOF unless he ends up like former Suns player Tom Chambers (20,049 points, no HOF).

The thing is, I in no way hold this comment against Bradley Beal. It doesn't take a love doctor to diagnose that Beal is clearly just in the honeymoon phase. We've all been there in every new relationship throughout our lives. You say ridiculous shit because your brain is on an all time dopamine high. Your new partner is perfect and can do no wrong, so I think with Beal he gets a complete pass with this sort of thing until at least Christmas. His brain isn't working properly right now, it's under the influence of the excitement and potential that every new relationship brings. In this case, that's calling Devin Booker a HOFer on June 29th, 2023. 

So you may want to clown Beal for this statement, but I won't. He probably doesn't even realize he said it. That's the power of the honeymoon phase