MARK AND JOSH Bartelstein have heard the basic jokes a hundred times.
“Boy, with that [player name] situation going on, that next family barbeque/holiday/party is going to be weird, eh?” Well, sometimes the truth is stranger than low-hanging humor.
On Wednesday, Mark Bartelstein, the CEO of Priority Sports, finalized a whopping $99 million buyout agreement with his son, Phoenix Suns CEO Josh Bartelstein, for star client Bradley Beal, ending what had turned into a monthslong saga.
On Thursday, they will celebrate Josh’s 36th birthday in Chicago. This weekend, there is a huge Bartelstein family wedding, as Mark’s daughter and Josh sister, Courtney, is set to be married to her fiancé, Max.
“Yeah, there’s going to be some jokes when I get the mic,” Josh Bartelstein told ESPN. “My mom and grandmas are going to love it.”
After the wedding, Mark Bartelstein is expected to finalize a contract for Beal to join the LA Clippers in a two-year, $11 million deal, he told ESPN’s Shams Charania, that completes a spectacular offseason for the team and ends a disastrous two years for the Suns and Beal.
THE END OF Beal’s tenure in Phoenix came in three acts.
1) After new head coach Jordan Ott was hired in early June after a protracted search, he met with Beal and presented him a plan for how he could be used next season, sources said. Beal is coming off a season in which his usage rate was the lowest of his career, his role diminishing under former coach Mike Budenholzer, who even took him out of the starting lineup for a six-week stretch.
Beal’s stats still presented well; he averaged 17 points and shot nearly 50% overall and just under 40% from 3-point range. But playing on a maximum salary, at $50 million, and with the team woefully underachieving, that production didn’t match the expectation, or the cost.
Ott, in his sales pitch to Beal, indicated the…
