One of the most sacred clichés in the basketball language, which we all use these days, is ‘he / she is a bucket’. In English, this means that the person can score at will, against any defense, anywhere on the floor.
But in the NBA, where the defense is, to put it mildly, not at the top of the priority list, leading scorers have never been so important.
This is a great time to be Bradley Beal.
The Wizards guard is at his best. He is, to run another gray cliché, a “three-level” scorer, equally unattended on three-pointers, mid-range shots and on the edge. Years of off-season work on his ball finishing and in the weight room have now enabled him to do so much more than track for 3s, as he did earlier in his career, with John Wall.
He is a three-time All-Star who will be in the starting lineup on Sunday night for the first time in Atlanta on Team Durant.