Bradley Beal is playing the best defense of his life

How Beal, Coach Bud, and the rest of the Suns have put together a top-10 defense so far

Have you ever thought about how rechargeable batteries work?

Like most people, I assume, I never gave them much thought. You plug one into an outlet, and portable electricity just sort of piles up inside, like filling up a champagne flute with Miller High Life, right?

That, of course, isn’t quite accurate. As you use a battery, electrons flow from the negative end to the positive end. When equilibrium is established, flow ceases, and the battery dies. To charge the battery, you have to put in energy to reverse the flow and force electrons back to the negative side.

Apologies to any engineers out there for the gross oversimplification, but I was thinking about the flow of electrons from one end to the other when considering Bradley Beal’s career arc. Few players have had as many ups (relatively) and downs (absolutely) as Beal. He’s had multiple seasons with a Defensive Estimated Plus/Minus in the bottom decile!

Of course, in each of those years, Beal was an elite offensive player, generally making up for his porous defense. However, since his trade to Phoenix last season, Beal has understood his assignment better than most. By almost any measure, he’s playing at or near career-best defensive levels, forcing electrons from one side of his battery to the other.

To wit, here is a chart I made with his D-EPM percentiles by year:

Most players don’t have the peaks and valleys we see above, and it’s even rarer to see someone reach new heights in their 13th season. To further my case, here is his Defensive DARKO chart, another all-in-one defensive metric:

You and I don’t need to know exactly what goes into those models to understand what they’re saying: the defensive battery is fully recharged!

If you’re not into alphabet soups, Beal’s newfound defensive prowess is borne out in more easily digestible ways, too. Beal is averaging the most steals and blocks of his career so far (which, naturally, means he sports the highest Defensive Box Plus/Minus of his life by a mile). Phoenix lineups with Beal only give up 111.3 points per 100 possessions, a well above-average mark.

NBA players do not usually see a massive defensive upswing in their 30s; defense is a younger man’s game, reliant upon quick-twitch athleticism and endurance. But Beal’s defense is far from a numbers-driven narrative. Coach Mike Budenholzer has deployed him as the starters’ point-of-attack defender. NBA.com says his primary defensive matchups have included Tyrese Maxey, Anfernee Simons, and LeBron James (perhaps somewhat of James’ choosing, but they haven’t been eaten up in those minutes!), and BBall-Index says that Beal has had the toughest defensive assignments of any Suns starter by a mile.

Now, he’s hardly perfect. I’m not trying to pull an Anna Sorokin here; Beal won’t be making anybody’s All-Defensive teams. As a small-ish guard, he can only do so much against bigger players. He occasionally gets caught going under screens when he should go over, and bizarrely, at least twice, I’ve seen him tying his shoe in the middle of the defensive action:

But shoelace issues aside, the effort level is consistently there. He’s putting in the energy to reverse the flow. How often have we seen a player go from max-contract, first-option status to grit-and-grinder almost overnight? How many undersized former 30-point scorers add the ability late in their career to destroy a 3-on-1 fastbreak like a miniature Draymond Green?

Although he’s been around seemingly forever, Beal is just 31 years old, and he still has excellent lateral agility and a 6’7” wingspan. He has some good (though not great) physical tools, and as the charts above show, he’s unleashed them in a way we haven’t seen in years. He’s playing hard, like when he fights through two screens to contest a Tyrese Maxey triple here:

Or here, where he effortlessly flits past two more screens again and harasses Tyler Herro into a slip:

I hear you harrumphing. Rock-solid screen navigation, but not precisely highlight-worthy, right? That’s sort of the point. This is what Beal looks like all the time: workmanlike. You can go pretty far with a coherent defensive scheme and effort in the NBA.

“I’m very excited about taking on the task of guarding guys,” Beal said a few days ago. “I just think that’s another level I can tap into.”

And that’s a level that the entire Suns team has tapped into. It’s true that Phoenix has faced a slate of opposing offenses more crippled than me after my forthcoming meniscus repair — two games against the Clippers without Kawhi plus a match against an Embiid-less 76ers team — but they’ve maintained a level of focus and intensity we haven’t seen from the Durant-era Suns in the past.

The Suns switch less than they used to, and Budenholzer has challenged his players to get over screens and stay attached to the ballhandler’s hip. Coach Bud’s teams are almost always elite defensively, and he has a strict ethos passed down from his days on Spurs coach Gregg Popovich’s staff: never, ever foul.

For a guy oft-criticized in the past for being too rigid, Budenholzer has changed his defensive philosophy in important ways (besides the no-fouls mandate). For example, his old Bucks teams used to allow opposing teams to shoot as many threes as they wanted, as long as those shots came from suboptimal shooters. Teams have gotten so good at shooting over the last few seasons, however, that this strategy is no longer tenable. His final Milwaukee season saw the Bucks rank fourth in three-point attempt rate allowed after being bottom-five in the previous four seasons. So far, the Suns have been top-10 in disallowing threes (including third in preventing corner threes) and 11th in opposing free-throw rate (a number I expect to improve over time with fewer games against the freebie-tastic Lakers).

The Suns rarely force turnovers (another Bud trademark), preferring to stay disciplined in their approach, but they clean the defensive glass at an elite mark. Add it all up, and you have a defensive identity that is both clear and (so far, at least) effective.

It’s tempting to say Phoenix’s defense is more than the sum of its parts, but that’s doing the parts a discourtesy. Jusuf Nurkic is an excellent drop defender with surprisingly quick hands, even if he can struggle with more mobile matchups (see his benching against AD). He doesn’t get nearly the love he deserves for his long-time defensive prowess.

Royce O’Neale is the consummate 3-and-D professional (and a vastly underrated playmaker, but I digress) who has been a change-of-pace small-ball five throughout the season. Rookie Ryan Dunn is already the best defender on the team, a grizzly bear mirroring footsteps like a particularly toothy shadow. He’s the situational break-glass player for when the Suns need some bigger perimeter help. Devin Booker has been his customary solid self, and Kevin Durant has been more than solid. Grayson Allen, Mason Plumlee, and Tyus Jones are not gifted individual defenders, but they know the gameplan, and they execute.

When it all comes together, the Suns can string together some gorgeous sequences:

It’s a long season. A lot can go wrong for both the injury-prone Beal (already nursing an elbow injury) and his squad. The Suns are a rickety bunch at the best of times, and we don’t know how they will hold up when they go against more dangerous offenses.

But it’s hard to point to what the Suns should be doing better, given their competition so far, and it starts with their third-wheel star embracing his new role as a high-energy stopper. Beal’s battery is full, and if it can keep a charge through the playoffs, Phoenix’s 7-1 start will prove no fluke.