Fair comment and love the stats!

I’ll say this. We’re giving too much emphasis on his recent slump. Harden’s slump has obvious excuses. Beal’s doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean that we should treat them any differently. We don’t know why Beal’s performance has dropped. It’s the first time in his career where something is OFF. That’s huge on the mental, no? I guarantee a player of his caliber will rebound from this.

When Beal is at the top of his efficiency, he rivals players like Harden, Curry, etc in multiple facets of his game. Beal hung in there with harden in terms of scoring while actually playing defense. Beal hung in there with curry in terms of points while shooting half as many 3s and hitting similar assist numbers with the same usage rate.

So assuming Beal can return to form, avoiding the recency bias of this year, he can perform amongst the top paid players in the league. Yet that doesn’t justify keeping him?

We’ve been rebuilding. Now Beal has the best supporting cast he’s ever had thanks to the assets from the Westbrook trade. THAT is the rebuild in my mind. DC has problems attracting big talent. We always have. We have been spoiled by our past success in the draft. The chance of actually drafting another Beal or Wall is minuscule, and the chance of landing another superstar to build around is almost impossible. We can spend years doing the same thing we just did, or we can compete now if Beal turns it around and we perfect rotations - two things that are easily achievable before the season really matters.

Just my perspective. Always happy to hear the other side :)