Bradley Beal’s no-trade clause is openly mocked around the NBA — and now it’s controlling the trade deadline

To understand the state of the 2025 NBA trade deadline, with one week to go and one Jimmy Butler still in a standoff with his own team, you have to go back to 2022.

With the 3 p.m. ET deadline on Feb. 6 looming, much of the league and many of the would-be moves seem to hinge on Butler’s short-term future. The future of the suspended Miami Heat star, though, seems to hinge on a decision the Washington Wizards made several summers ago.

That’s because the new CBA, restrictive in so many nuanced and byzantine ways, means Butler can’t be traded to the Phoenix Suns, reportedly his preferred destination, without Bradley Beal moving elsewhere.

And Beal, of course, has that no-trade clause he somehow managed to wrangle from the Wizards when he signed his five-year, $251 million dollar deal in 2022. A no-trade clause that went with him when he OK’d a move to the Suns in the summer of 2023.

An NBA team executive, when asked why the Wizards gave Beal the rarity of a no-trade clause in 2022 that today is a key cog in Butler leaving Miami, just laughed. “Good question.”

While the sense around the league remains a firm belief the Heat will deal Butler in the next week, a would-be move for now remains gummed up as everyone waits to see if Butler relents on his desire to go to Phoenix — or if Beal becomes willing to agree to a trade.

And how, in either case, those outcomes impact the price Miami will ultimately demand and the other teams that, as a result, could get in the mix, either to acquire Butler or help facilitate the move.

“[Beal] is now controlling the biggest trade in the NBA because he got something from Washington two years ago no one else would have given him,” said one Eastern Conference executive whose team might be interested in Butler.

In Phoenix, where they still want to find a deal that brings Butler in and sends Beal out, they remain skeptical that Beal will agree to move on. Matters are further complicated by the fact that most teams that would be willing to take Beal would likely want picks in return for taking on his contract (which has two years and nearly $111 million remaining after this season) — and those are going to be organizations that are likely rebuilding, hardly a tempting pitch for Beal to leave Phoenix.

Which takes us back to 2022.

That’s when the Wizards then-front office did the unthinkable, giving their star — but hardly a top-five player — a straight-up no-trade clause afforded to few bigger, better superstars. 

To get a no-trade, a player must have eight years in the league, have four years with that team, and must be signing a new contract, not an extension. So there are hurdles to jump through — before you factor in the fact it’s a hard “no” from almost all front offices for almost all players who do qualify.

The only other player in the league who has a no-trade clause right now? LeBron James.

And in fact, the last time more than two players had a no-trade at the same time was in 2018 — when LeBron, Dirk Nowitzki and Carmelo Anthony were afforded so much control over their futures.

“Here’s the deal,” a third executive said. “His agent is Mark Bartelstein — he’s an assassin. He’s going to take every f—ing inch, every player option, every advantage he can get in a contract he’s going to get. And they just acquiesced.”

They are former Wizards general manager Tommy Sheppard, who was fired less than a year later, and Washington owner Ted Leonis.

Said a former GM: “Ted said Tommy did it. Tommy said Tim did it.” He laughed. “Somebody signed off on it.” 

Around the NBA, most view the Wizards’ decision to give Beal that no-trade clause with contempt and ridicule. That’s a feeling that’s kicked back up as the Butler-Heat drama has cast a spotlight on Beal, the power he yields, and the inexplicable reasons the Wizards ever agreed in the first place to allow him to have so much leverage. 

Leverage he now retains with the Suns, who allowed that power to come with him to Phoenix.

Even the current Wizards front office, which had nothing to do with that deal, prefers not to think about it.

“It’s something nobody likes to talk about,” another source said.

A general manager who’s dealt with Bartelstein spoke with admiration about how he pulled a no-trade clause rabbit from Beal’s hat.

“Kudos to Mark Bartelstein, he had one of the least talented of the recent supermax guys and got his client by far the most favorable terms. It’s really amazing.”

And, now, really problematic for the Suns, a fact wrapped in its own irony.

Because Bartelstein’s son, Josh, is the president of the Suns. That might help a deal get done to convince Beal to leave Arizona, but it also creates some interesting dynamics if he stays put.

Said a source familiar with the Suns’ inner workings: “At the time he was trying to make his son look good to the Suns new owner [Matt Ishbia], but it backfired because you ended up parking a big pile of s— in Ishbia’s backyard.”

Several executives who have negotiated deals with superstars who wanted no-trade clauses over the years openly mocked the Wizards for giving Beal that deal, and painted a similar picture of how those negotiations are supposed to go: The player and his agents inevitably ask for the no-trade, you talk it through, you sell them on your commitment to them, you point out you’re never going to be the one to move on from a star of their caliber, you insist if he ever demands to be traded you’ll accommodate him but that you can’t be held hostage by that clause and how it can narrow trade options to just one team — and you say, ultimately, “no.”

You do what every GM almost always does.

“You have to be willing to have an argument and say, ‘Hey look, this will never be an issue, you’re our cornerstone and we’re never going to screw you over and trade you the way the Clippers did with Blake Griffin, but we can’t give you that,'” one said.

But the Wizards didn’t do that, and so here we are, in the Jenga-like drama in Miami, where so many intricate things have to happen for Butler and the Heat to find a solution to their standoff.

Including, in the connect-the-dots way the NBA works, that terrible decision from 2022 — unaltered by the Suns in 2023 — that means one of the worst decisions the NBA has seen in a decade continues to weigh heavily on the future of many teams, various title hopes, and where Butler will or won’t play next.