It’s been assumed that the Phoenix Suns are canvassing a wide swath of the NBA searching for how to offload Bradley Beal’s contract while simultaneously attaching their desire to acquire Miami Heat forward Jimmy Butler.

Apparently, that includes asking the Chicago Bulls if Beal could join his college coach, Billy Donovan.

The Bulls, who have been looking at trading guard Zach LaVine for awhile now, have been loosely named by Arizona Sports’ John Gambadoro and NBA insider Jake Fischer as having some relation to what the Suns want to do.

ESPN’s Brian Windhorst laid this out as cleanly as possible on the latest Brian Windhorst and the Hoop Collective podcast recorded Sunday night.

“We’re dancing around this because I’ve just been burnt on aggregation, but the bottom line is that the Bulls and Suns have talked on the concept of Bradley Beal ending up in Chicago (and it) has been discussed,” Windhorst said.

“I’m not saying it’s going to happen. I’m not saying it’s close or whatever. Obviously Beal has a no-trade clause … I just can’t believe that Chicago would do that deal. Maybe it’s never going to happen but it’s been discussed.”

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• Suns keep gambit rolling, continue mortgaging future with pick trade

It’s not clear if the Suns are targeting help from the Bulls to get a Butler deal done, or if they are separately thinking about taking back LaVine.

LaVine will make $46 million next season and has a 2026-27 player option left on his deal. With that, his deal could be thrown into a complex Beal-and-Butler trade to satisfy somebody.

LaVine is still 29 years old and averaging a solid 24 points, five rebounds and five assists per game this season.

Fischer, in Marc Stein’s newsletter, last week wrote that some in the league wonder if a straight swap of Beal for LaVine could make any sense.

Sources say Phoenix, to name one example, could emerge with interest in exploring a swap of Bradley Beal for LaVine, sources said, depending on how the rest of the trade landscape develops in the coming weeks.

It’s hard to explain how that would make sense for Chicago or for Phoenix, who in that spot would take on a similar score-first guard.

It makes even less sense for the Bulls, who can get a lot more for LaVine than for Beal and would need a lot of good reasons — i.e. draft picks — to take on Beal’s two years and nine figures left on his contract.

“It’d be one of the dumbest trades ever if they did,” ESPN’s Tim Bontemps responded to follow Windhorst. “The Bulls don’t have to do this. There’s no reason for the Bulls to do this. Just wait it out. You’re going to probably get real value for Zach in a year or two. … It would just be the height of insanity to do that.”

Jazz front office is quite pleased about Suns’ 1-for-3 draft pick trade

The Suns’ active phone lines have been described as potentially “annoying” to the rest of the league. The Utah Jazz seem plenty happy with taking the call, though, as they last week acquired a 2031 unprotected first-round pick for three late-firsts heading to Phoenix.

Phoenix’s acquisition of the three picks from the Jazz for the 2031 first-rounder has taken criticism. It was labeled by Jazz general manager Justin Zanik, after he acquired it, as the “most valuable asset” that was on the trade market.

“(The trade) balances out what we want,” Zanik told the Jazz’s TV broadcast crew last week. “We’ve always talked about bites at the apple or more swings in the draft, but it is also about the quality of the swings, and this is, in my opinion, the most valuable asset on the market right now.”

For the Suns, it was necessary to give themselves more options in a Butler trade or otherwise.

In a potential Butler trade that would require multiple firsts to send two or more different places, moving that unprotected pick to Utah was necessary. Before last week, Phoenix only had that 2031 first-rounder and a 2025 second-round choice to deal.

But in a vacuum, it was a one-sided deal that Zanik laid out pretty bluntly.

“The way it makes sense for us is that we now have another shot at a pick that has a lot of variability,” he said. “The three picks we traded have no chance to be the No. 1 pick, and this one does.”