The Kevin Sheehan Show - Bigger Mismanagement: Beal or Cousins?

Episode Date: June 19, 2023

Kevin solo opened with his thoughts on the trade of Bradley Beal to the Phoenix Suns. He then compared the mismanagement of the Beal situation to the mismanagement of the Kirk Cousins situation several years ago. Kevin finished up with his US Open thoughts and some interesting information about Sam Howell and Dyami Brown from Albert Breer/MMQB.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You don't want it. You don't need it. But you're going to get it anyway. The Kevin Cheon Show. Here's Kevin. On Olinic. Olinic has 19. Beal makes himself available.

Oh, it's a three and a foul. That moment back in mid-May, 2017, was the closest the Wizards have been to the Eastern Conference finals in 44 years. That was Bradley Beal knocking down a three, getting fouled to cut the Boston lead in game seven of the conference semifinals back in 2017. It cut that lead to four, and it would get no closer, and that was the only seventh game the Wizards have played in since 1979, and the furthest they had ever gone and have gone since 1979. I loved that game. I'll never forget how pumped up I was for that game 7 against Boston. It was the Kelly Olinick game. It was when Kelly Olinick came off the bench and scored 26 points in 28 minutes.

It was the game in which John Wall, after he had hit the big shot in game 6 to force game 7, had a bit of, you know, a power outage, if you will, and went stone cold in game seven, especially down the stretch. And it was Bradley Beale who carried them, 38 points for Beale. In fact, he had 33 in game six of that series, even though everybody remembers that series for John Wall's game winner that gave the Wizards a 92 to 91 win to force the seventh and deciding game. It was actually Beal who had 33 points in that game and led all scores in that game. He scored 71 points for them in the final two games of that series.

Bradley Beale was traded over the weekend, even though as we speak right now, as of the recording of this podcast, it is still not finalized yet. And the part in which Chris Paul doesn't end up in Washington but ends up either in Los Angeles. with the Clippers or the Lakers, that part isn't done either. My thoughts on this. And then a comparison to the Kirk Cousins mismanagement. They're both comparable. The Bradley Beal, Ted Leonis, Washington Wizards mismanagement,

and the Kirk Cousins, Dan Snyder, Bruce Allen mismanagement, two of the most embarrassing player contract situations ever in the history of sports in this city. The show today is brought to you by My Bookie. My Bookie offers a chance, if you use my promo code, to get a first deposit bonus of up to $1,000. Just use my promo code, Kevin D.C. to claim that bonus. I gave you those surprising defensive player of the year odds the other day. Not that surprising when you think about it in terms of which Washington player had the best odds to win NFL defensive player of the year. The answer is Chase Young.

The division odds are up on my bookie now. And man, Washington is the second biggest long shot to win a division in the NFC. right now only the Cardinals who are plus 2,500 to win the NFC West are a longer shot to win their NFC division. The Eagles right now are minus 118. They're the favorite at my bookie. The Cowboys are plus 179. The Giants are plus 700. And Washington is plus 1100 to win the division.

So 11 to 1. The other divisions are pretty close, but then again, I mean, the NFC North and NFC South are kind of up for grabs. Detroit's actually the favorite in the NFC North. Minnesota is the second favorite, and then Chicago and Green Bay are both at plus 400 to finish third. And then in the NFC South, the Saints are the favorite, followed by Atlanta, Carolina, and then the Bucks are plus 700 to win the division. 49ers, pretty hefty favorites at minus 175 to win the NFC West. The Cardinals are the long shot in that division. Go to mybooky.ag or mybooky.com.

Use my promo code, Kevin D.C., and they'll take good care of you at MyBooky by offering up a first deposit bonus of up to $1,000. Don't forget to rate us and review us, especially on Apple and Spotify from Smiley G. I love all of the Washington commanders talk, but I like your Washington Redskins talk as much, if not more. When you go down memory lane, Kev, it's the best. Thank you, Smiley.

I appreciate that. Just trying to keep you smiling. Yeah, I can't remember when we did that recently, although it feels like we may have done that last week. Oh, we did. We were trying to come up with the greatest draft day steals in franchise history. So I think that's what Smiley was referring to. Rate us and review us on Apple, Spotify, five stars, quick one to two sentence review is super helpful.

And if you follow us, that's really helpful as well. The follow button on Apple Podcast is in the upper right-hand corner. of the screen, Spotify down the left-hand side. Following us is a big deal. Follow us, rate us, and review us if you haven't done it. Much appreciated for those that have done it. So, Bradley Beale was a good player here. He was.

He was a really good player, and I kind of feel like over the years, I have really hammered him a lot. I have definitely nitpicked the hell out of him over the years because there were so many moments that were so frustrating, but it's also a result of my feeling for many years now that Bradley Beale was a really good player, but not an elite player, and he was being paid like an elite player, which I never understood why the Wizards viewed him that way. And I'm not even sure the basketball people ever did view him as a true superstar player. But he was a good player here. He's a memorable

player here. He's an all-time great wizard slash bullet when you consider just the players that have played in D.C. For me, it's Elvin Hayes, number one, Wes Unseld number two, and then Bobby Dandrich is number three. I'm talking about just the players that played for the bullets or wizards in D.C. And then you can start to have the debate over number four. It's probably John Wall ahead of Gilbert Arenas because they had more success in the postseason. They won three series in the postseason with John Wall and Bradley Beal as younger players. I mean, that's more than Gil ever did. Jeff Malone is one of those players.

Phil Schneer's one of those players. There's a debate as to who number four is, but Bradley Beal's in the conversation. Bradley Beal is the second all-time leading score in this franchise's history. He is only 160 points short of the Big E. He's also third in games played as a bullet slash wizard, third in minutes played as a wizard-slash-bullet. Bradley Beals numbers, all-time three-point shooter, of course, Bradley Beale's numbers would certainly dictate that he is in the conversation. after what I think are the easy top three. A lot of people would put West 1, Elvin 2.

I'm an Elvin Hayes guy. I love West 2. They're clearly the two best players in the history of the franchise. Bobby Dandrich, for me, is third because they don't have a title, their only title, in D.C. Without Bobby Dandrich arriving when he did. And he was a great player for them for a few years. He also was the clutch play. player. He was the guy that put them over the top. Bobby D's number three on my all-time list. And then again,

you know, Beal, Wall, Schneer, Jeff Malone, you know, have at it. Gilbert Arenas, lots of different options there for number four, number five, et cetera. Bernard King, a few years he played here. Moses Malone, a few years he played here. But I would probably go Wall. four and Beal five, although I hate leaving Phil Schneer out of that conversation. Anyway, he was a good player here, really, really good player. Look, the situation which the wizards found themselves in was of their own doing. They were unwilling to trade him when the trading was good, when it made sense to trade him. And now, because of a bad contract in the league's only no trade clause with this new group,

they were forced to accept basically cents on the dollar. And I would make it equivalent to something like 10 cents on the dollar, where if they had traded him two years ago, somewhere in that range, you probably would have gotten $2 back for the dollar. But the trade went like this for those that haven't. followed all of the particulars. Beal to Phoenix for Chris Paul Landry Shamit, who's actually not a bad player.

He had a couple of good playoff games this go-round. I liked him at Wichita State when he was there seemingly forever with Fred Van Vleet and all of that, you know, those good Wichita State teams. Chris Paul, Landry Shamit, several second round picks, and picks swap. All right, that was according to Woj. ESPN yesterday. The news broke. The second round pick, you know, number, Bobby Marks, who we had on the show

on Friday, suggested that they've got up to six to give the Wizards, and it might be all six that they have. So six second round picks, you know, somewhere in that neighborhood. The pick swaps, basically what that means is that the two teams will swap picks in the first round in the future. Obviously, this should be a wizards option. I'm hoping. It wasn't really spelled out, but I'm assuming it's a wizard's option, which means that, you know, that that's not going to be something that they take advantage of for years to come because the Sons are going to be much better than the Wizards for the foreseeable future. So they'll have picks much later. The Wizards aren't going to swap, you know, hopefully their number one or number two overall pick for the next three years with the Sons at 27.

Now, the Chris Paul situation is, you know, essentially everybody believes that Chris Paul isn't going to play one minute of basketball here. And there was a little bit of an update to the Chris Paul saga this afternoon. Chris Paul told the New York Times that he was surprised by the trade that sent him to Washington. And he implied that Isaiah Thomas, who's an advisor in good friend, friends with new son's owner, Matt Ishbia, was involved in the decision-making process. Chris Paul said, quote, it's tough. It's just tough. Seriously, it is part of the business. And what you realize is that no one owes you anything, no matter how you are with them or what you do, you realize that in this business, nobody owes you anything as it should be. But when it comes

through and my son texts me, I realize that, you know, Matt and Isaiah, I guess just wanted to go in a different direction, closed quote. The wizard's situation with Chris Paul is, you know, it's still developing. The initial report last night was from Chris Haynes from TNT, who said the wizards are likely to reroute Chris Paul to the Los Angeles Clippers. There have been other reports that have suggested that the Lakers would be very interested in Chris Paul, finally uniting Chris Paul and LeBron James together is something they've always dreamed of doing. There's also, I guess, the possibility that Washington and Paul agree to a contract buyout,

which allows him to become a free agent. He said in this New York Times story this afternoon, quote, I don't know, I really haven't had enough time to process it yet, like seriously, because these things that happen affect more than just me, closed quote. you know, it's possible that this may be the best chip they have, especially if there's competition for them. My personal view is, I hope that, you know, Ted and Michael Winger and Will Dawkins in the front office don't play the, you know, let's do the right thing by Chris Paul. You know, he is a legendary player. He's at the end of his career. nobody really wants to trade much for him anyway. Let's let's, you know, let him go via some buyout for nothing.

I hope they do everything they can to try to get something back for Chris Paul. The Lakers have the number 17 pick in Thursday's draft. The Clippers have, you know, Terrence Mann. Not many picks, though, at all. They don't have a lot of ammo there. I did say, and I talked about this this morning, you know, if Porzingis ends up staying on his, player option. It actually would be kind of fun to watch Chris Paul and Chris Stap's Porzingis play together for a season. That would be a pretty daunting pick and pop, pick and roll combination, but that's not the long-term plan. That's not what they're doing. You know, the Miami, it seemed to me last week, and we talked about this, I thought Miami probably had the most ammo, you know, with the three first round picks. I didn't think that they wanted to trade Tyler

Hero. But the reporting on this is that Miami, that deal just wasn't available to the Wizards. And by the way, again, the no trade clause was no help in the negotiations because Beale and his agent Mark Bartolstein, you know, had all of the leverage. And if Beal preferred Phoenix over Miami, then there's nothing, you know, he wasn't obliged to do anything for the Wizards to help them out with his no trade clause. They're the one that gave it to him. But I think some of the reporting also indicated that Miami may be more interested in Damian Lillard, which would be smart. Lillard's a better player than Bradley Biel. If they had had Damian Lillard for this recent playoff run, they may have played all the way until last night, which would have been game seven. I think

game seven would have been last night. But anyway, the biggest roadblock for the Wizards was the contract. And the second biggest roadblock for the Wizards. And what they got back was the no trade clause. But 200 plus million, make no mistake, because there's been a lot made about the no trade clause. And it was not helpful at all. It was stupid to throw that into the deal last year because it didn't seem like they

needed to do it. But the $200 plus million left on the $251 million deal was the biggest, you know, decision that any team trading for Bradley Beale had to make is, can we take on all of this? And is it worth it? We'll find out when he teams up with Devin Booker and Kevin Durant and Phoenix. They don't have much else, although they did keep DeAndre Aiton. I wonder if the Wizards were even enticed with DeAndre Aiton. I haven't seen any reporting on that. So let me get to my takeaways on this.

I've got three major takeaways. Number one is this, and it's more kind of the glass-half-full, optimistic good news, because part of this is not good news, but the only good news in all of this is that Michael Winger, Will Dawkins, the new front office, they're being given the chance to do something that Ted hasn't wanted to do. And that is to blow it up and start all over again,

aka rebuild, legit rebuild. You know, and I have talked about this before when we've talked about rebuilds in the past. There's no guarantee that a rebuild, a tear down, and a rebuild, a process, and, you know, really, you know, going forward. lots of picks and lots of young players until you land on one or two that are truly great. There's no guarantee that that will work.

But what they've been doing has been a disaster. One playoff appearance, one playoff win in the last five years. A rebuild's got to produce. It's got to land an elite star or two minimum. And the new executive front office group, their ability to, evaluate young players and project those young players into the NBA, into NBA startem, will determine whether or not the decision to rebuild worked or not. So that's to be judged three, four, five, six years down the road.

But even if it doesn't work, it is the right decision right now. Because it's the only way this franchise has a chance. This is not a franchise that LeBron James, or Kevin Durant say, hey, I'm going to put together a big three and we're going to take it to D.C. You know, the Wizards haven't had that option. They haven't had that opportunity, you know, to get, you know, the three major league stars to commit to playing with one another in our city and try to win that way. It's never been that, this city. You know, this group of Michael Winger and Will Dawkins and Travis Schlenk,

etc. They're going to have to take the path of tearing it down and building it back up with young players. This is the right decision, even though the only guarantee in this decision is pain for a few years. You know, there's no guarantee that that pain leads to the promised land. There's no guaranteed guarantee on that at all. But it doesn't mean that it will have been the wrong decision in the moment. It's the right decision. So takeaway number one, summing it up, the adults are in charge, and that's the good news, I guess. Loyalty, long-winded TED answers about how rewarding good people in the short term pays off in the long term like it did with Alex Ovechkin. That's being shelved for now. The two are not comparable, more on that in a moment. You know, I guess better late than never. So maybe some credit to Ted

for finally seeing the light and then hiring some high-quality people and getting out of the way. But not seeing this much earlier costs this organization dearly. It costs them years and assets. If they had made the right decision two years ago, they'd be two years ahead of where they are right now with much more in return for trading Bradley Beale. And that leads me to takeaway number two. I mean, Landry Shamet, Chris Paul, second round picks. Are you serious?

I don't know what I was expecting. I guess I was expecting more than that. Maybe I should not have expected more than that. I mean, I don't know that anything's ever been more mismanaged than the Bradley Beale contract situation when it comes to, you know, contract situations in this town. I mean, it's a close call between Beal, and cousins. I'll get to that in a few minutes. I don't even care at this point. Who wanted to do

what, when? You know, was it Tommy's call? Was it Ted's call? We know Ted wanted Bradley Beale. He loved Bradley Beale, thought Bradley Beale was a great face of the franchise, and he was. He's a first-rate young guy, by all accounts. But man, this is on the franchise, and the franchise is owned by Ted Leonces. Ultimately, if someone else wanted to pay Bradley Beale to $251 million and he didn't, he could have stepped in. I don't think that was the case. But paying Bradley Beal $251 million less than a year ago was too steep of a price for loyalty. And then the no trade clause on top of that was just sucking up. I know that it worked with Alex Ovechkin, but Alex Ovechkin, but Alex Ovechkin, Vetchkin was a true superstar in his sport. Brad never was. He never was, and he was never going to be

a number one on a contending team. I know that I have been nitpicky with him a lot over the years. You know, I never loved his ball handling. I never loved how careless and casual he was with the ball. I always felt his free throw shooting was under what it should be percentage-wise. He finally got it up a little bit in terms of the percentage of free throw shooting. But I always thought he was a really good player and a really good guy. I just never thought he was who they thought he was or, you know, the way they paid him. Bradley Beale is the number one on their team going back to John Wall's last healthy day here. So once it was over with Wall, and Beal became, the de facto number one player on the team. This is before he signed the deal last year. The Wizards

are 68 games under 500. I know he's missed a lot of those games due to injury, but with him in the lineup, it's like 30-something games under 500. That's not what a true number one produces. He was never what they thought he was as a player. As a man, as an ambassador for the franchise, sure. Great. This is a business, though, and the business, number one goal of that business, the number one goal of that business is winning. The other stuff is pleasant, it's sweet, but it's much better when it comes with winning. And Beale wasn't good enough to be the number one on a legitimate contending team. As it turns out, he wasn't even good enough as a number one to lead a team to the postseason. consistently. He has been and still is today at best a number two on a team capable of winning

a series or two and a number three on a contending team. And that's what he'll be in Phoenix. You know, as long as he doesn't get hurt. But the teams number one and number two are Durant and Booker. The clock, by the way, is ticking a little bit on Kevin Durant, don't you think? You know, He went for it in Brooklyn, and that produced nothing but migraines. Now he's got another big three in Phoenix, and he's trying to prove when he left Golden State that he can win a title without Steph, Clay, and Draymond. I'm not saying that Kevin Durant isn't an all-time great player. Of course he is. But, you know, he wanted to prove that he was truly, you know, one of the greatest that's ever lived.

And you can't do that if you can't be the obvious. the obvious number one on championship teams. And even though he was the best player on those Golden State teams, it's going to be tough for him to ever in retirement get out of the Steph, Clay, Draymond State shadow if those are the only titles he ever wins. This might be the last shot for him. And I'll tell you what, from a Phoenix standpoint, they got a lot of offense, but they don't have much defense, and they don't have a great bench.

They don't have a bench at all. But back to the wizards and what they got for Beale. This is not on the new front office. I mean, I think they could have gotten a little bit more, but I don't really know. The $200 million left on that deal for a guy that's missed 74 games the last two years and had a no trade clause. I mean, those were big influencers in what they got back.

You know, but you think about like the Utah, Minnesota trade, all those picks for Rudy Gobert and, you know, even what the Wizards were able to pull off in recent years, for John Wall and then for Westbrook. You know, Wall to Houston, Westbrook to the Lakers, they just got back a tiny fraction of some of the really good deals. But again, 200 plus million, no trade clause. That put Beal and his agent Mark Bartlestein in the driver's seat. And that was the difference between maybe extracting 30 cents on the dollar, versus what they got, which I would equate to 10 cents on the dollar.

You know, the deal, by the way, I saw Ben tweet this out. I think it was Ben who tweeted this out. The deal with Phoenix, the CEO of the sons is Josh Bartlestein. That's Mark Bartlestein's son. That's Bradley Beale's agent's son. But anyway, the Wizards, you know, they didn't get more because they hamstrung themselves. and, you know, with the contract, with the no trade clause. And by the way, Beal's got, you know, an injury history here.

So teams, I mean, Phoenix could ultimately, you know, bomb out on Bradley Beal being the number three guy. I mean, they didn't bomb out in this trade, obviously. But it may not work for them. I mean, he's missed 74 games in two years. Think about, by the way, I was thinking about this on radio this morning. the history of the Wizards giving out big contracts. Gilbert Arenas basically played 50 games after signing the big deal in 2008.

And then, you know, him and Javarz Kritenden with the guns in the locker room. I mean, just the entire smearing of the franchise name. Not that it had much more smearing left as an opportunity. But my God, did Gilbert Arinas really not make the Wizards feel good about paying them all that money in 2008. John Wall signed the big $170 million, you know, big deal in 2017 after he was all NBA. He's barely played since. I mean, don't forget, they gave Otto Porter Jr. over $100 million, and he ended up getting dealt a year and a half later to the Bulls. And now Beal, less than a year after giving him the second biggest contract in the league at the time last summer, he's gone. I mean,

the Beal deal is the worst, because to me, he had already proven to you as an organization that he wasn't worthy of a true number one contract. But they gave it to him anyway. Coming off a year, don't forget, where he missed 42 games. And then on top of it, they gave him the only no trade clause in the league, which impacted any kind of leverage they had even further. And they didn't have much by the nature of the size of the contract and the player who's been injured. The Wizards had chances two years ago to trade a player with less wear and tear at a much lighter contract load. And if they admitted then what most of us knew then and known now and have known for a while that Bradley Beale was a really good player but was never going to be a great player, then they would have traded them away and they would have gotten a haul back for trading them. The fact that they didn't and they're on the verge of getting virtually nothing back for him now

is an unmitigated failure on the part of the Wizards organization owned by Ted Leonces. Second takeaway is just looking back to see how they got into this situation and really in many ways shaming them for it because these were horrible decisions. along the way. And it wasn't that hard not to see it. Takeaway number three. None of this is Beale's fault. They offered him the contract. He took it like he should have. He didn't draft the players that were drafted while he was here. You know, if they had drafted better and they had some really good young players and one or two of them were developing into legitimate stars, players that were better than Bradley Beale, but on, you know, it's

smaller contracts for the time being, they may have had a run in them. I mean, it could have been a better team under Bradley Beal, just not as the number one player, but they would have had to draft well. And they didn't draft well. They've never really drafted well. But he wasn't responsible for the surrounding cast. You know, the best cast he ever played with was when he was young. And he was a true number two, and you could have almost made the case,

that he was just kind of coming into his own as a number two because they had some veterans on the team like Neneh. Nene, you know, in their first playoff series against Chicago, back in 2015, 2014, excuse me, Nene was kind of the star of that series when they beat the Bulls in five. You know, Gortat was big time. Arisa was big time.

Pierce ended up playing really well. You know, in many ways, Bradley Beale, when they were winning series, especially in those first couple of years. He really wasn't the number two, but he had, there was a better cast around him, not a championship contending cast, but, you know,

a win a series or two supporting cast. But this wasn't on him. Not his fault. Bradley Beale, again, I have at times, over the years, felt badly nitpicking his game. game. But this is, you know, the sport I love. And, you know, there were games that were super

frustrating to me, you know, with Bradley Beale. He was incredibly casual in his approach to the game. I mean, last, not this past year, but in 2021, my God, he spent half the year arguing with officials. He felt like he should get star treatment. He had earned it because he was the leading score in the league, you know, the year before that. But he really wasn't that level. And it seemed like every time he was down there arguing a call, somebody was dunking on the other end. And then when you saw the replay, it's like, what are you talking about, dude? You didn't get fouled. But he was a good score. You know, he can really shoot it. I know some of the percentages have gone down, but he can really stroke it. I actually thought he got better this year at being a shot creator.

He was awesome in the mid-range on the step-back. He was great with the step-back, not giving up the dribble and then blowing by you and getting to the rim. He was a very good finisher at the rim. You know, I thought he could have developed into a better post score. There were, you know, times where I thought he settled for the three too much, but he always had a great stroke. Like the percentage on, you know, his three-point shooting percentage, ultimately, you know, we've had conversations about this. in the past. Most recently, by the way, Dante Scott for Maryland, you know, I remember

Naki saying to me, his percentage is his percentage, you know, is his percentage. He's now proven that he's not a good three-point shooter, and I'm like, yeah, but the stroke is good. And if he's got open looks, I wouldn't tell him to stop shooting it. And then he started to shoot it better, at times, you know, down the stretch, and he improved the three-point shot percentage. Beale's got a great stroke. I mean, there isn't an open look that he should ever pass on, but he could really create two. He was a scorer more than he was a shooter. It's one of the best scores we've ever had in this organization. Again, number two on the all-time points list. I never loved him as a defender because he wasn't an interested defender a lot of the time. I never thought he was

terrible when he was really engaged, you know, in a playoff game. But there were a lot of possessions where, you know, he wasn't a great defender. And I think the most frustration for me was Beal just turned it over too much. And so many of those turnovers were never really turnovers that were forced, in my opinion. But he was an elite score and he had memorable games. I think that Toronto series in the second year, I remember, I think it was Game 2 in Toronto because they swept Toronto that particular year. And, you know, that was the team that Toronto had

Lowry and DeRosen in the back court. And they were the favorite to win that series. And game two, the Wizards, you know, got down and then Bradley Beale went off. And I'll never forget, he did an interview, I think, with Chris Miller going into the halftime locker room. And he just was pissed about some of the calls that Toronto got early in that game, some of the talk.

And he went for 28. in that game. He was 12 of 21 shooting. He had a couple of steals and he was outstanding, I thought, in that series, but especially in helping them jump out to a two-nothing series lead on the road. He was great in the Atlanta series, the year that John got hurt when they could have made the Eastern Conference finals that followed the Toronto series. He was really good in that series. And they had a chance, even without John, after John got hurt. You know, that game six, I think it was Pierce had that look at the buzzer that could have forced overtime in game six at home. But they were right there.

You know, that was the Millsap, Horford, Kent Bazemore was playing as a young player. Schrooter was on that team for Atlanta, I think. Yeah, right? I think it was Schrooter. And then in the Boston series in 2017, after an Atlanta series in which he played well, but John Wall had one of the great games, playoff games in, you know, the limited Wizards, bullets playoff history. But his 42 points in game six on the road to close out Atlanta were some of the most exciting

and game takeover kind of situation points we ever saw John Wall produce. But Beale, in that Boston series, he was awesome. I mean, 33 and 38 in the last two games. and he shot way over 50% from the floor in those two games. And they had a chance. That was the closest they ever got, the closest they ever got, to getting to the Eastern Conference finals. But it is over.

This team is in rebuild mode. That's good. But the time it took for them to get here was incredibly costly, and that is on the organization owned by Ted Leonces. It was a poor, poor couple of years of mismanaging the Bradley Beale situation. There'll be more to this deal, especially with Chris Paul, so we'll have more on that through the rest of the week. All right, when we come back, which was worse in terms of the mismanagement of a contract situation?

The Beale situation or the Kirk Cousins situation? More on that right after these words from a few of our sponsors. Second down, freebie coming again. A throw by cousins under duress. Yeah, under duress, my boy delivered in that game against Seattle back in 2017. I put a poll up earlier today at Kevin Shee in D.C. Which team mismanaged the following situations worse? the Wizards with Bradley Beal or the Redskins with Kirk Cousins.

They are comparable. Now, my answer is, because it was so obvious, Beal wasn't a number one player, but you were going to give him a contract that not only made him look like an elite player, but it was the second biggest deal of all time. And I know that had to do with timing and the fact that he was coming up on the contract

and could opt out, et cetera, and it was the only way they could keep them. But still, I just thought that it was much more obvious all along that this isn't what you wanted to do with Bradley Beale. With Kirk, the one thing that I would just say in their defense, and there's not much defense that you can give them, and I'll get to it in a moment, is if they didn't really believe in Kirk Cousins as their long-term, term answer, then they, I guess, ultimately did the right thing without giving them a super

long-term deal for the kind of money that Minnesota gave them and even the money that the Jets were offering, which was like 90-something million guaranteed. You know, I think that would be the difference. Like the Wizards loved Bradley Beale and felt like he needed to be rewarded. He needed to get his bag for what he had done. but what he had done wasn't enough to get that kind of a bag. And more importantly, you know, what he was going to give you was never going to be worth that much. Whereas, you know, Bruce Allen and maybe even Scott McLuhan to a certain degree, you know, they weren't so convinced.

So they treaded lightly, you know, with cousins. It cost them and it was not, you know, evaluating well and it wasn't seeing what he would become. which was easily a top half of the league starter, which they haven't, you know, didn't have before then and haven't had since. But that's why I gave the nod to the wizard's mismanagement of Beal being a little bit worse. But 58.4% of the respondents so far with about 2,000 votes in say that the cousin's handling was much worse. And look, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, I promise you. but for the purposes of remembering and remembering accurately,

because many of you have a very inaccurate memory when it comes to what happened to Kirk Cousins here. You just like to say, it doesn't matter he didn't want to be here, so what's the point? Well, that's not true. Early on, you know, after his first year of starting in 2015, they had low-balled him during this season.

He didn't accept it. It was like $12.5 million a year. I mean, it was a super low ball offer. And Kirk bet on himself in the 2015 season over the final four to five games. They got to the postseason. He played well. And then after the 2015 season, they made another ridiculously low offer. They offered him $24 million guaranteed over five years, $16 million a year,

when he was already set to earn $19.7 million via the tag. I mean, I remember being on radio every day going, why would you think he would accept 24 guaranteed for five years when he's going to make $19.7 million for one year and then become a free agent again, or force you to tag him again for $24 million next year? Like, they just, they weren't very bright. Again, if you want to say they weren't sure about him, then we'll get to what they should have done after 2016, which was trade him.

But 2016 offered another opportunity for them to make a run at keeping him. And, you know, at that point, you know, it may be true that Kirk didn't want to stay in Washington. A lot of people didn't want to stay in Washington. But they never made him an offer for him to say no to because they offered him 53. million dollars, 53 million in guaranteed money. I'll never forget, Cooley telling Bruce Allen, you're 20 to 25 million off on this thing. He's going to get $75 million next year on the open market. And Bruce laughed at him, laughed at him. And Cooley, he said, what do you know? And Cooley said, we follow this stuff. You know, this isn't, you know, I wanted to say,

this isn't 1975 where nobody has the internet and nobody understands contracts. And And of course, a year later, he got 31 million more and guaranteed money from Minnesota, $84 million, and got offered over 90 by the Jets. They were just dumb. And then the dumbest part came in really two ways. Bruce holding that press conference after Kirk turned down a deal that was not acceptable on any level. No agent would have ever told him to accept $53 million in true guaranteed money for a longer-term deal when he was going to get 80 plus the next year. We thought 75 plus at the time.

And he holds that dumbass press conference, threw him under the bus, and made him out to be like he was greedy. And it was just, and then it's like, I remember, I'll never forget that press conference. And being on with Cooley and just saying, they have to trade him now. They're going to end up losing him at the end of, next year. They've lowballed him over and over again, and now they've insulted him with this

dumbass throwing him under the bus press conference. They should trade him now to the 49ers. And of course, we know that the 49ers wanted to trade for him, but they were too petty to trade him to the Shanahan's. You know, we heard the number two overall pick was for sure in the works. Jay Gruden told us on this podcast a couple of years ago, he heard it was multiple first round picks. And Jay knew, Jay wanted him to get signed long term, but he knew once they offered him $53 million and he said, no, I'll play on the franchise tag. They had to trade them.

Or they were going to lose them and they were going to get a third round compensatory pick back for him, and that was it. Imagine that they paid him $44 million for two years when he probably would have taken between $45 and $50 guaranteed for about four years at the end of the 2015 season. It just was a massive mismanaging of the whole situation, and not trading him was the worst. You know, it's one thing to have not believed in him, and that's okay. If that was their evaluation, they were obviously wrong because he did turn out to be a quarterback worth paying and worth keeping, considering what they've had since.

But, you know, not trading him when you could have gotten a lot back is similar. similar to the Beal situation. They didn't trade him when they could have gotten a lot back for him, knowing that, you know, in the case of Beal, you know, he really wasn't the guy. You know, Kirk would have been the best quarterback that they would have had over the last, you know, five years without him. Is it five now? 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 22, 25 years, yeah.

Anyway, the Beal thing still drives me nuts because it was so, obvious. The skins thing was so obvious too, but they, you know, they didn't love him and the wizards loved Beal. They didn't love him and they under-offered. The Wizards loved him and overpaid. Both players should have been traded earlier for a lot more in return. And I think a lot more would have been gotten for Beal at the time two years ago when he was coming off, you know, leading score in the league, had been healthy, et cetera. By the way, I had several people reach out to me to say, you know, they did get a third round compensatory pick back for him, and it was Terry McClorn. No, it wasn't. Terry McClorn was their own pick in 2019. The compensatory

pick at the end of the third round that they got back from the league after he signed a big deal in Minnesota, was traded for two fourth rounders, so they ended up getting West Martin and Bryce Love in the fourth round of that draft. So basically, Kirk Cousins for West Martin and Bryce Love. Bradley Beale for Landry Shamit and a bunch of second round picks. Both of those deals are horrendous. We'll finish up with some of the golf and maybe a few other things right after these words from a few of our sponsors. who takes down all the stars in Los Angeles to win the United States Open. A year ago, Wyndham Clark was ranked 241 in the world.

He's now ranked 13th in the world after taking down some big boys, Rory McElroy, Scotty Sheffler, you know, Dustin Johnson, Cameron Smith, and Ricky Fowler in. his return to championship contention. He deserved it. Wyndham Clark deserved it, shooting a final round par to finish 10 under. Remember after day one when you had the pair of 62s by Xander and Ricky Fowler, we were wondering whether or not, you know, something like 15, 16, 17 under might be required to win the tournament. It turns out only two players were better than 8 under for the tournament. and Wyndham Clark won it at 10 under par.

He earned it, man. He hit some big shots. The shot at 14 after Rory had that inexplicable decision to lay up with his second shot and then the terrible third shot, Rory bogeied 14, Wyndham Clark birdied 14 with an incredible second shot. That seemed to be, you know, the tournament. But, you know, Clark in those difficult closing holes, bogeied back to back. at 15 and 16, and Rory was there within a shot, and Wyndham Clark just needed, you know,

one bogey at 17 and 18, or Rory needed a birdie down the stretch. Rory couldn't get a birdie. In fact, his par saves were pretty amazing, especially the shot at 17 with that six iron from 200 yards out. Windham Clark did a great job. He really did. The chip on 17 to save par that set up that tap in. He had some really good shots down the stretch pressure shots. I thought it started the day before on Saturday when he bogeyed 17 and came right back with a birdie at 18 when Ricky Fowler was bogeing, missing that really short putt. It's funny, I had Steve Sands on the radio show today, and he was great. And he said he actually thought Wyndham Clark birdying 18 was going to be a problem for him, because he's a problem for him.

it put him into the last group where all the pressure was, and it put Rory into the next to last group yesterday, where Rory could chase and put the pressure on Clark. I guess the biggest disappointment was Ricky Fowler's final day. He had played so well, and so many people were obviously rooting for Ricky Fowler. He's really been kind of off the grid as a player, really lost it there for a few years in terms of his game, and he's gotten it back here recently, and it was great to see him in contention, but he shot 75 on the final day.

The weather was conducive early to some really low scores. Tommy Fleetwood shot 63, but none of the leaders by the time they went out, of course, it firmed up a little bit, and none of them really made the front nine, which was easier all week. They couldn't really make it pay off for him. And Wyndham Clark is the champion,

and that scene with him and his brother, sister that came out to give him a big hug. If you watch the golf all weekend, you know about the story. Their mother passed away at the age of 55 years old from cancer 10 years ago. He really went through a difficult period. Ended up transferring from Oklahoma State to Oregon. He's had the talent. He won earlier this year, Quail Hollow, in Charlotte. And he's a good player. It was kind of nice to see. I was rooting for Rory, rooting for Ricky, but at the end of it, really happy for Wyndham Clark. And look, the golf course and the crowds, we found out sort of as, for those of you that were watching, you saw it was not, you know, a raucous crowd. There weren't big crowds.

There were empty grandstands. And it's because they had a deal LACC did with the USGA to sell a lot less tickets. And a lot of those tickets ended up going to member. who didn't use them. It was odd. I mean, there were holes that really felt like we were watching golf during the pandemic. You know, remember golf was going on during the pandemic with all the other sports stopped and no crowds and it felt that way. The course, the players, you know, mixed reviews, some real negative about the course. Everybody that was there that covered it said it was a beautiful layout and the greens were spectacular. But it was,

It wasn't necessarily a player favorite. And then, you know, ultimately the broadcast, I'm not, you know, I don't have a problem with Dan Hicks as the lead guy. I'd love to see, I'd rather Toreko be doing it. But Paul Asinger, I mean, good God, he's terrible. And he's been terrible for a while now. But if I hear Marine Lair one more time or hear how Wyndham can't win or, I mean, somebody tweeted, it out, everything Paul A. Zinger says is proven wrong within three seconds, and it just seemed that way. There were a couple of greens that he had completely misread, and he just was, you know,

I think he's very hyperbolic, so everything's great or everything's terrible. And we all know when everything's great, nothing's great. When everything's terrible, nothing's terrible. And it just got annoying to listen to him. I think NBC's got to make a change. I was a Johnny Miller guy personally. I always liked Johnny Miller. I know that he was more polarizing. Aesinger just seems to be a guy that nobody really loves. All right. No real news related to the Washington commanders over the weekend. We know that July 20th and August 8th are the dates for the vote. And you know, there was nothing new on Hard Knocks, nothing new on Kareem Hunt. But there was this from Albert Breer in the Monday morning quarterback this morning. He wrote about Sam Howl and also

wrote about a player that apparently impressed during OTAs in minicamp, and it's a name that we really haven't heard yet. I'll get to that in a moment, but let me read to you what he wrote about Sam Howell. He wrote, quote, Sam Howell held serve all spring. And I believe his lead in the Washington quarterback derby is significant. Yes, commanders coach Ron Rivera said a few weeks back that Jacoby Brissette will have a shot to win the job in the summer, but he spent the rest of the team's offseason program telling everyone who'd listen how much he believes in howl. And that belief was justified over the past nine weeks. We can start with this simple stuff. For a guy whose draft status may have led to

some misperception of his talent, Hal consistently put a plus arm on display in OTAs and minicamp, making throws some quarterbacks won't and generating plenty of velocity on the ball. Also with the whole offense adjusting to the complex offense that new OC Eric B. Ename is installing, Hal had his bumps, but never seemed behind in learning it. As a result, Hal took all the first team reps through the spring. And again, while there were bumps, it doesn't sound like there's any reason for Bianami and Rivera to veer off that course that they set for the quarterbacks back in April. So he seems to think that whatever, you know, lead he had to start, you know, his job to lose,

he more than maintained that. And he said, you know, from the very beginning, I believe his lead in the Washington quarterback derby is significant. And then there was this last paragraph, which I thought provided a little bit of a reveal. And for what it's worth, that offense, getting its start with Bianami, had a really nice nine weeks as a whole. The new coordinators brought an urgency and an attention to detail and the energy to the unit with the message clear that every player has to prove himself all over again. In particular, it's brought the best out in third. Third-year receiver Diami Brown, who had a great summer as a rookie but got hurt and has been a little lost since.

It's brought the best out in third-year receiver Diami Brown. Interesting. I actually asked Ben Standing about that like a week ago. I said, is there any chemistry between Hal and Diami Brown that anybody's been talking about? And he said, no. Apparently, somebody told Albert Breer, Ron Rivera. or somebody in the organization, because Breer definitely has, you know, a relationship with this organization. But somebody told him that Diami Brown looked great during OTAs in minicamp.

And then he just finished up. Excitement over what Bianemi will be able to do with his tight ends is also there after coaching Travis Kelsey in Kansas City. So there's a little optimism in D.C. ahead of a summer that will be marked by wholesale change in the organization. So, interesting stuff. I mean, it's Albert Breer. He's certainly got the, he's got an in. And I think it's with Ron Rivera in the organization. All right.

We are done for the day. I will be back tomorrow with Tommy.