Bradley Beal still wants a max deal from the Wizards this summer, which makes total sense

Do you like money? Do you wish you had so much money you could bathe in it? Do you wish you had so much money you could have a conversation with your spouse and get confused about which beach house they're talking about?

If so, you're not much different from Bradley Beal, who wants all the money the Wizards can give him, according to Jorge Castillo of the Washington Post:

"I want to be valued the right way,. I feel like I’m a max player and that’s what I’m looking for. If Washington can’t meet that requirement then I may be thinking elsewhere. I’m pretty sure that they probably won’t [let me go]. At the end of the day, that’s where I want to be. I think a deal will probably get done but you just never know."

Beal has good reason to think a deal will get done in Washington. The free agent market at shooting guard is shallow this summer, which means plenty of teams will be interested in his services, and it would be difficult to replace his production in the short-term or the long-term if he signed elsewhere. Plus, Ernie Grunfeld echoed Beal's sentiments last month, saying "we hope to get him signed" during the team's end-of-season press conference.

Certainly, signing Beal to a max deal comes with risks. He hasn't made it to an All-Star game and he hasn't improved much from last season.

Then there are the injury concerns. He's missed 65 games over his first four seasons thanks to a slew of injuries, including that troublesome right fibula which has cost him games in each of his four NBA seasons. But for what it's worth, he doesn't think those issues should affect him going forward:

"I hear about it all time, but that doesn’t define me as a player. That won’t stop me from growing as a player and it won’t stop me from being who I am. The injury thing, that’s behind me. I’m moving forward. I’m past it. I’m focused on my career from here on out. Hell, Steph Curry was hurt his first four years. Look at him now. John [Wall] was hurt his first three or four years. Look at him now. I’m not worried about it. People are going to say what they want to say. At the end of the day, it’s not going to affect me or the money."

The comparisons to Wall and Curry, two guys who shook their early injury bugs, are valid. Then again, comparisons to Eric Gordon and Brandon Roy, two guys who couldn't shake their early injury bugs, are equally valid at this point.

The truth is, no one has a clue how the rest of Bradley Beal's career will pan out at this point. Even if he played at an All-Star level and never missed a game in his first four seasons, there's nothing protecting him from suffering a catastrophic injury in his fifth season that makes him a shadow of his former self and cripples the team's financial flexibility.

That's why ultimately Beal is right to be confident in his ability to get a max from the Wizards this summer. In a world with no certainties, the Wizards have to do what they can to put themselves in the best position to compete. Ultimately, they stand a better chance at getting a star shooting guard with him on the roster than they do if he's somewhere else next season.

In the meantime, please put down that sword Brad. You could hurt yourself.

A video posted by Takuma Oikawa (@oitaku) on May 23, 2016 at 8:06am PDT