Bradley Beal pushed his way into the NBA’s elite, and his All-Star Game start was validation

What was first a 180,206-vote lead over second-place finisher Kyrie Irving had bloomed into a gap of more than 700,000 fan votes by Feb. 18, when Beal was named an All-Star Game starter for the first time in his career. Of all the guards in the league, fans had cast more votes only for Stephen Curry, meaning Beal had beaten out Luka Doncic, James Harden and Damian Lillard as the guy die-hards most wanted to see in the NBA’s glitzy annual showcase, which was held Sunday in Atlanta.

“That’s been the toughest side of things to embrace, like, the fact that it is a popularity contest,” Beal, 27, said in a phone interview last week.

To be clear, winning a popularity contest in a player-driven league in a landscape in which most successful athletes also have spit-shined personal brands is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s an extraordinary feat for a player based in Washington.

Beal became just the fourth Wizards player this millennium to start in an All-Star Game. He followed Michael Jordan, who earned the nod in his comeback year in 2002 and started in 2003 only because Vince Carter gave up his spot; Gilbert Arenas, who hired a marketing consultant and openly launched an all-out media blitz to earn his starting nod in 2007; and John Wall, a former No. 1 pick who was a cultural phenom the moment he stepped foot in D.C. and finally earned the starting honor in 2015.

Beal is the only one to lead his position group in voting.

“It’s kind of surreal, to go from 800,000 votes last year to over a million in the first round this year,” Beal said. “That was — it’s kind of hard to put together. It speaks volumes to the hard work I put in.”

When he was snubbed for the 2020 All-Star Game, the guard was averaging 28.7 points and 6.4 assists and shooting 45.3 percent from the field carrying a 16-31 Wizards team — the first player in 41 years to average at least 28.6 points and not make the all-star team, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

This year, Beal upped his scoring average and is pouring in a league-best 32.9 points per game, shooting 48.2 percent from the field. He is again shouldering a sub-.500 Wizards team (14-20) that, critical to the popularity contest aspect of the All-Star Game, has not played a single nationally broadcast game this season.

Fans outside the Washington area must fork over a couple hundred bucks a year to watch Washington on the league’s over-the-top streaming service.

Even then, Beal isn’t sure the average viewer fully appreciates how difficult it is to average 30 points for a season, a feat only 11 players have accomplished since 2000.

“I think people think I go out and just shoot a lot of shots, and granted, yes, I do have probably more opportunities than a lot of other guys around the league, possibly,” Beal said. “But when you know that each and every night [opponents] have to game-plan for me and then I still am able, with my teammates, to go out and do the same thing I’m doing? Like, that’s not easy to do. It’s not easy to score 20 points. It’s not easy to score at all.”

One legitimate explanation for the popularity surge, aside from the undeniable scoring numbers, is that Beal’s visibility has grown in the past year.

He signed an endorsement deal with Jordan Brand ahead of the season and was constant media fodder during the Wizards’ particularly bad stretch in January and February, when his forlorn faces on the sideline became viral memes on at least a weekly basis. Beal acknowledges that the ceaseless churn of trade rumors concerning him also played a role in raising his profile among fans.

But Beal — or at least the people around him — played a role in elevating his all-star stock, too. The guard was bluntly honest multiple times last year when answering questions about his snub, stating he felt disrespected, a sentiment his teammates and coach echoed.

His agent, Mark Bartelstein, told The Washington Post that the league’s coaches “sent a horrible message” by not naming Beal an all-star reserve.

Beal’s partner, Kamiah Adams, set the NBA’s online ecosystem aflame with an appearance on the Wizards’ postgame radio show for a thorough breakdown of what she referred to as the political nature of the All-Star Game.

Laid back and quiet by nature, Beal said he is always appreciative of those who speak up on his behalf — especially Adams, who frequently tweets along with Wizards games. The pair occasionally have conversations about Adams’s online presence — plenty of NBA significant others have faced backlash after venturing into the public eye — but ultimately Beal sees her as part of his voice.

“She’s a fan, at the same time. Kamiah has a voice, and she has freedom of speech just like any other fan,” Beal said. “So she has every right to defend her husband the way she does. I’m always appreciative of it. There are moments I tell her to dial it down just a little bit or there are certain things you can and can’t comment on, but for the most part, I give her free rein. She’s part of my voice. I will say, she’s not the whole thing, but she speaks sometimes for me. I would say that.”

Beal wouldn’t change a thing about how he has honestly answered questions and advocated for himself in the past year concerning the All-Star Game and being left off the all-NBA team, but something did shift in him in the wake of the snub. Beal didn’t want to crave anyone’s approval anymore; he wanted to get back to playing basketball for the pure love of the game.

But even then, he couldn’t let go of the idea of what it means to be respected in today’s NBA.

“This year, I had the mind-set that I wasn’t going to let anybody shoot me down,” Beal said. “I wasn’t going to give anybody a reason to not respect what I was doing. I didn’t really care whether you did or not, but in my head, I was personally just not going to let that happen.”