INDIANAPOLIS — Bradley Beal could make good money moonlighting in the offseason. He could travel to packed arenas of chaotic, loud people and teach them to be present in the moment, to find serenity and quiet amid the madness.
Twenty-year-old NBA playoff neophytes are not supposed to lead silent retreats.
They are not supposed to take veterans off the dribble with the shot clock winding down and stick clutch jumpers. They are not supposed to air ball a free throw, smirk and come back with another big shot. Or score 14 points while repelling the home team in the fourth quarter of Game 1 of the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs.
They usually have license to lose their poise, miss makeable shots, chalk up their misfortune to postseason experience and then come back the next year and blossom into something special.
Beal is not that kid. Monday night the words “kid” and “Beal” were officially retired from cohabiting the same sentence.
A kid does not become the first NBA player in more than a decade to finish with 25 points, seven rebounds, seven assists and five steals in a playoff game, which Beal did in the Wizards’ 102-96 victory. A kid doesn’t become the first person in league annals to have three playoff games with at least 25 points before their 21st birthday.
Youngsters this good certainly don’t make Paul George pause in a postgame press conference, before the Pacers’ all-star guard gushed: “Bradley Beal’s a superstar in this league. He’s on the rise.”
There were a lot of reasons the Wizards staved off Indiana and won their fourth straight road playoff game and got out of the gates for the sixth straight time blindingly quick. Trevor Ariza, who couldn’t miss from three-point range. He made all six he took and combined with Beal for 47 points. Together, Beal and Ariza were essentially the Swish Brothers.
Martin Gortat and Nene played ferocious defense down low, helping each other out, rotating, doing all the dirty work to enable the skill players to shine. John Wall blew by so many Pacers in the first half he should have been at the Brickyard.
But in the end, a child led them — just as Beal did in Chicago in Game 2 against the Bulls, firing in so many elbow-in long-range shots that just splashed through the netting. And even when he faltered, like when that free throw inexplicably didn’t touch the rim, he laughed it off as part of the game,
“I can’t believe I shot an air ball,” he said afterward. “I guess everybody has their fair share. I just stayed confident. I just focused more. I think I was thinking way too much, because I had missed two in a row and I shot an air ball. Down the stretch, I wanted to focus in and with people chanting air ball, I just wanted to try to make them be quiet and get them out of my head a little bit.”
He shut a state up in the fourth quarter.
The crowd was curiously subdued early, as if they really did not want to invest in this Indiana team that had let them down so often the past few months. But that was the first half.
The last two quarters had moments of ear-piercing loud, just pure lunacy — 18,000-plus esophagi fully opened and engaged, their necks and veins protruding through a wear-your-Pacer-pride canary yellow T-shirts handed out before Game 1, a literal human sea of Tweetie Birds.
“GOLD SWAGGER,” their chests read between howls.
Then the barrage happened. First Ariza, then Beal. Together they made nine shut-the-front-door three-pointers, maybe two of which touched the rim. If you told them their red jerseys with the blue and white trim were on fire, they would have slowly looked at their torsos and calmly replied, “Why, yes, they are on fire.”
Gold swagger, red daggers.
“Like, the way I think about it, I’m 20 years old, playing in the playoffs, something I always dreamed about, so why not embrace it?” Beal said with so much candor. “Why not accept that challenge? I’m just having fun on a great team. Whenever we play together and play the right way, it motivates me to the be the best player I can be.”
He also gave it up for his teammates, because what’s a young player with so much talent and promise without humility, too? I mean, really, is Bradley Beal for real?
“I have great vets,” he said. “I think I have a bunch of guys that have been there before. Trev’s won a championship before. He just tells me to stay in the moment, stay with it, if I’m not shooting the ball well.”
There are many games left to play in this series, any one of which can expose a flaw or showcase a moment of concentration loss expected of someone of Beal’s age and experience.
But we are two series in now, and it has not happened yet. Even when his shot doesn’t fall, he doesn’t lose confidence or his cool. With Ariza as a mentor in this Tao of The Jump Shot course they are teaching, it is still unbelievably perplexing to see someone so young be so good.
Another crazed arena shuffles out, another silent retreat on the road complete.