Apparently Durrant, but hey that was less than a month ago and yet its a completely different world now.
Ben Simmons wants out of Philadelphia
- Thread starter JCizzle
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I don’t hate the idea, assuming Kyrie gets vaxxed. The 76ers already are a soap opera. This would just exchange the drama queens.
Brooklyn. Simmons isn't vaccinated.
Quoted the wrong person but that's who says no.
I still find this whole “Doc and Embiid threw Simmons under the bus” thing to be a complete joke. Here’s what they actually said:
Doc: “I still believe in him.”
Embiid: “It’s on me.”
Even Simmons acknowledged he was terrible, he still loved the organization and that he expects to be treated harshly by Philadelphia.
I mean, if that’s what counts for “holding someone hostage” and running someone out of town in todays NBA, boy …
https://www.nbcsports.com/philadelphia/sixers/ben-simmons-sixers-game-7-loss-hawks-doc-rivers-nba
Doc: “I still believe in him.”
Embiid: “It’s on me.”
Even Simmons acknowledged he was terrible, he still loved the organization and that he expects to be treated harshly by Philadelphia.
I mean, if that’s what counts for “holding someone hostage” and running someone out of town in todays NBA, boy …
The Lord of Time may want a word with you about that …
If Kyrie gets vaxxed, he's not going anywhere because Brooklyn's problem is solved and Durant keeps his buddy. In this hypothetical, you're getting an unvaxxed Kyrie.
Sigh. Maybe read the rest of the thread. He did not miss a team flight. He missed a flight. There is a huge difference between the 2 things.
You gotta think he'd do anything to get out of Philly right now though. And to go to a title contender? Would he be that stupid to turn it down over a shot?
His defense is flexible, that's what makes him so much more valuable than Clint Capela. How is Gobert on the perimeter? I'd have zero concern about Ben guarding larger wings 4s and small-ball 5s on the block (see Draymond Green). Obviously, against the beef Centers you can throw out a cheap, beefy Center, there are dozens of them on the market for cheap (see GSW approach to the Center position over the last 5yrs).
Since there is less than a .1% chance he ends up on the Celtics, I look forward to Ben Simmons being terrible, never seeing an All-Star game again, uncoachable, and unable to play in the playoffs that many here think.
I don't see it playing out that way, but I hope I'm wrong and you're right.
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Meh. This isn’t how the league works. Most GM’s who value their agent relationships recognize that he’s never going to play for the Sixers again and would have already traded him rather than force him to essentially suspend himself which I’m sure we all would agree he tried to do by showing up with his phone, refusing to participate in drills while waiting for Doc to make his move. It’s a high stakes chess match and Morey wanted to make it ugly to force Simmons hand. Action now on Morey.
I was comparing Time Lord to Capela. Yes, Ben's defense is flexible, and that's the benefit in a switching system. But as you point out, you'd need a beefy center to play against other beefy centers, and those guys can't shoot, which is why having Ben Simmons on the floor is damaging. The theory of Ben Simmons is great but in practice it's a really difficult puzzle piece to fit. And when he's the lone big out there in smaller lineups, he's not on the perimeter as much because he needs to be a rim protector, which we've never seen him do.
Context matters. The words do not represent the tone and body language they made. You cannot watch these pressers and come to the conclusion that he wasn’t thrown under the bus unless you already decided your position.
I wouldn't be so sure he's not vaccinated, that came from some prime Ramona Shelburne pure speculation. There is some counter speculation that he's probably vaccinated based on his trip to WImbledon this summer and some evidence he didn't have to quarantine
what does the big beefy Center do on D, come out to the top while Ben streaks by him?
how is Smart or Draymonds defense on the block?
Simmons is a younger/better version of Draymond Green, the GSW owner said as much and was fined for it.
How does the league work? Honest question.
Even if the end result was the same—Simmons requesting a trade—I just don’t understand why Simmons couldn’t have just acknowledged his playing badly had exposed that the fit with them is wrong. He could have even issued some statement saying, “I have nothing but appreciation for the 76ers organization. But in the wake of last years playoffs, it is clear that the time has come for us to part ways” and then just played hard until the trade happened.
How hard would that have been? Instead, everything is Morey, Doc, and Embiid‘s fault and he’s acting like a victim.
Context does matter. Doc was acknowledging the truth of what the whole world just saw. Yes, it was unwise and he should have dissembled.
I thought we had already concluded that he isn't vaxxed. I'm just surmising that the desire to be off the 6ers might be stronger at this point. He's miserable.
Ah okay. Well, Wimbledon required vax OR negative test, so it's not really proof of anything. But I thought there was a delay integrating Simmons into the team? Maybe that's old / bad information I'm going off of.
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I mean, his camp said the first part in the summer, that it's a bad fit and he needs to go elsewhere and that was the reason he should be traded. Simmons has said nothing, he's left all the talking up to his agents, which is generally the smart thing for a player to do.
As to the latter... if he does that they won't trade him, he's too good and the trade opportunities too limited.
How the NBA works is... players have no control over where they play for the first 5 years, then they have control only in small spurts when FAs. In between, they have almost no control, they are stuck and can't quit because it's a monopoly where all the employers collude to prevent a true open market, completely unlike basically every other job in the world. So, there is a tacit understanding that sometimes when a situation is bad, a player will ask for a trade, and the team will usually trade them. Sometimes the team will refuse, which leaves the player with 2 options:
1. Play it out and hope something happens, which usually ends in them being stuck a place they don't want for sometimes years.
2. Make themselves a problem until the team trades them.
When asked about whether Simmons could be a PG on a championship team, Doc should have immediately and unequivocally said, "yes". Whether he believed it or not, and have those discussions in private with the relevant parties. IMO that was Doc foolishly backing over an already deflated and flattened Simmons and doing it on a very public stage.
Doc should have known better, but perhaps it was reflective of Doc wanting to deflect criticisms that would be aimed at him.
Oh, well if Joe Lacob said it...
I'll put it this way - if you were starting a team and your goal was to win 40 games, Simmons would be one of the first players you'd pick. He has a lot of great qualities in that regard. If you're trying to compete for a championship, he's much harder to fit into your plans.
Draymond's a great case in point - he was an incredible piece when he had a hot shooting season and he hasn't been as effective since the shot left him. The whole point of the Death lineup was that he could be a pain in the ass to much bigger players while also enabling the offense to further spread out because he hit open threes. You didn't lose anything on either side of the floor and you had mismatches during the most important parts of the game. Without that second part, he's just a pain in the ass on D to much bigger players. With Simmons, we know he can't do the shooting part and we think he can do the D part. I'd way rather have the known peak Draymond vs. Simmons if I'm trying to win in the playoffs.
Exactly. That's just standard coach talk. For anyone not to read that as egregiously throwing him under the bus is to ignore how coaches talk. And even more so on the Embiid quote
"it's on me" doesn't take away from his starting by specifying the Simmons play that garnered so much attention. If he meant "it's on me" he wouldn't have specified the Simmons play as the turning point and returned to it. So, yeah, it's on me...except it's not -- it's on that other guy.
Yeah, peak Draymond was DPOY and a passable 3 point shooter, along with averaging 8 rebounds and 7 assists per game. Even before getting to the attitude gap between the two, peak Draymond was better than Simmons is right now.
Or maybe Doc wants to force Simmons out and coach this roster without him around. Doc may initially have regretted the words and context but I believe as a coach he wants to move on, despite what the organization is asking him to carefully say each day this week. We should not take anyone at their word this week because of legal implications down the road when the PA tries to get Ben’s money back in court.
A leaders priority in that case is to protect his player from what he (should) knows was going to be a media shitstorm…….not to “tell the truth.” I love Doc and have defended him forever on this board but this was a colossal misjudgment on his part.
Which brings us back to Doc's unspoken role as asset manager. He took one of the NBA's most prized assets and gave him a haircut in value yet to be determined,
It was fucking stupid and ill thought out and if I was Morey I'd want to rip Doc's balls off and shove them down his throat and tell him, STFU.
And I like Doc.
It's not completely impossible that Doc thought that by going public it would force Simmons to actually change and improve his game going forward. By saying what he said, it may actually have been for the good of the team, if Simmons remained on the team and actually changed his game. Clearly nothing else the Sixers org has tried in the past has worked.
Clearly it didn't work (if that was even the intent) and I think it's more likely than not that Doc said what he said because he was frustrated and trying to cover his own ass, but in my mind the blame for all of this (from the team perspective) is less on Doc and Embiid (who did little more than acknowledge the obvious) and more on Morey for not moving on from Simmons quickly this summer.
I agree with this. I think even if the playoffs go a bit differently and Simmons plays like he did the 1st series and it's kind of a whatever thing (or honestly even if that one key play doesn't happen) and Doc and Embiid don't use him as a scapegoat... he probably still asks out. All they really did was make it easier for him to decide he was just 100% done in Philly and wasn't coming back no matter what. Morey is definitely the person on the 76ers side who misjudged things. I think he really believed (maybe still does) that he could get a superstar for Simmons, and when it wasn't there in the summer, he thought "well if he plays well he'll build value, we just have to force him to play". Which doesn't seem smart to me on two fronts.. 1. It's really hard to force a guy to do something he doesn't want to, especially when it's something that requires incredible effort and talent. 2. NBA GMs aren't Twitter talking heads, they aren't going to change their thoughts on SImmons if he comes back and does what he does every regular season. He'd need to play really well in a playoffs to substantially change the thought process inside the league.
Edit- or I guess if he came back and shot 32-35% on 2+ 3PA per game, but a guy who wants to be traded isn't overhauling his game for you.
Didn’t Ben’s play in the Atlanta series, and ones before, determine his value? Haven’t his playoff shortcomings that have been discussed and dissected for three years on SOSH long been obvious to NBA GMs? Toronto and Miami have both exposed Simmons in prior series. Double up Embiid and leave Ben alone. Everyone knew the doubts about Ben in a short series before Doc spoke after Game 7. Embiid has his doubts confirmed in Game 7.
Doc was telling Morey it’s time to move on from Ben. The league already knew, especially after Morey tried to trade Ben for Hardin last December and was rebuffed by an old adversary. That open trade discussion is when Ben knew he had to get out of Philly, not after Game 7 of the Atlanta series when Doc answered a question truthfully, in the heat of the moment.
Sorry, this is just my point of view, from a Philly perspective.
One of the first rules of training almost anything - don’t prioritize the shit you like doing and are good at, work on the shit that’s hard for you and holding you back.
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I like Simmons' defense a lot and I'm not sure he isn't the most versatile defender in the league, but it's basically a stone cold lock that his defense is worse wherever he goes next. He'll likely take on more offensive responsibilities (leaving him with less energy for defense), and unless he goes to Utah, he won't have an A+ rim protector playing behind him. Perimeter defenders always, always look better with that safety net behind them.
No.
His value can be determined or calculated in several ways.
The first and most obvious is his salary. A couple of years ago he signed a max contract, which I believe has 4 more years and $140MM to run. Is Simmons worth that today? IDK. Probably. Someone would take that contract and hope he gets his shit together. But lets not kid ourselves 4/140 puts a dent in a team budget and you don't want to be wrong on the talent/chemistry assessment and buy someone else's headache at top of the market.
YMMV
A second measure of value is trade value. At the time of his contract signing it can be argued he was one of the most valuable assets in the NBA. A young elite talent, with multiple skills. When this controversy first started we heard that Morey initially wanted talent of equal/near equal value (presumably a max type player) and 4 1st round draft picks to entice him to trade Simmons.
Can Simmons get that kind of trade value today?
Probably not.
If I was a middle of the road team there is no way in the world I'd give up players AND my draft capital (3 or 4 future 1s) for a question mark like Simmons. If Simmons isn't all that you've fucked yourself for close to a decade.
It seems the only offers are viewed by Morey as low-balls.
Doc didn't just tell Morey, Doc told the world. Its possible if Doc was more diplomatic in his response (re can Ben be a PG on a championship team?-who the fuck says no to that, particularly if you want to trade the guy) a deal could have been made at more favorable terms for philly. But IMO Doc made a mistake and aired his dirty laundry in public. And dirty laundry, even Ben Simmon's doesn't get what it used to.
So his value is being reassassed with the addition of Doc's publicly disclosed information and Ben's reactions.
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There is no probably about it. If Simmons was a FA and every team had cap space to offer 4/140 - every team in the league would offer 4/140
I mean, he's thought of as one of the top defenders in the league across the board of NBA analysts, from old-school eyetest guys to more analytics friendly. He came 2nd in DPOY voting last year after 4th the year before. He's pretty much universally thought of as an elite defender.
The Athletic's annual coaches poll had him as the best defender, with 12 of 13 voters putting him either 1st or 2nd.
https://theathletic.com/2745318/2021/08/02/anonymous-nba-coaches-poll-2020-21-best-defenders/?source=twitterhq
That's Scottie Pippen. I mean I don;t know what you want from his defense beyond near-universal acclaim from players, coaches and analysts.
If someone asked Ben, "Do you think you can win a title with Doc Rivers as your head coach?" And he answered the way Doc did, how would that play out?
Or does he need 3 HOF?
I agree that Doc should have kept his mouth shut or dissembled.
I don't agree that Doc was airing dirty laundry that wasn't already publicly disclosed. The whole league saw laundry not get washed.
I have no idea how Doc would react if Simmons said that about him. Maybe he'd laugh. I doubt he'd quit.
I don't agree that Doc was airing dirty laundry that wasn't already publicly disclosed. The whole league saw laundry not get washed.
I have no idea how Doc would react if Simmons said that about him. Maybe he'd laugh. I doubt he'd quit.
I think it fair to say that Doc publicly disclosing his doubts about Simmons winning a championship as a PG, falls under a broad heading of airing of dirty laundry.
It was the first I had heard of Doc's lack of confidence in his PG.
It was the first I had heard of Doc's lack of confidence in his PG.
Defensively, probably a bit. He's got a rep as perhaps the best wing defender of all time, but he somehow never won DPOY. It's typically a big man award, but I still count 9 wins for perimeter players over the last 40 years.
I'm sure you watched more of the series than I did but from what I saw, Trae Young was killing PHI until Simmons started guarding him (yes I'm repeating himself). And to my eyes, PHI had no one else that could even slow Young down.
Do you agree?
Yes, with the caveat that Danny Green’s injury early in Game 2 impacted Philly’s depth. Green couldn’t cover Trae in Game 1 and Doc put Ben on Young at times. As the series progressed, Green’s absence became a subtle factor in the 76ers’ demise. But injuries happen. Atlanta was short two rotation pieces, iirc.
It’s gonna be ugly in Philly Friday night if Ben is in the arena.
https://www.inquirer.com/sixers/ben-simmons-sixers-gear-merchandise-on-sale-20211020.html
https://www.inquirer.com/sixers/ben-simmons-sixers-gear-merchandise-on-sale-20211020.html
View: https://twitter.com/Great3st_/status/1450725244088602629?s=20
I find something calming about this level of consistency.
I find something calming about this level of consistency.
He'd be a horrible fit in Dallas because he's useless off the ball and taking Luka off the ball to accommodate Simmons makes the offense worse. Golden State is in a similar spot, sure Curry’s a great shot maker, but why reduce his gravity to accommodate an other guy on the floor level offensive player? Portland? I’m not sure they’d want to move Dame for him, and as with Golden State, why reduce Lillard’s gravity for an inferior player?
Now, sure, the talent starved teams would likely happily take a flyer, but I’d wager that Houston would hang up the phone if Jalen Green were the expected return. Ditto for Detroit and CC. Cunningham will almost certainly not be as good as Simmons defensively. But he has a lot more offensive upside. And he’s got a lot of Marcus in him in terms of competitive fire. Ben Simmons, to put it politely, does not. As for the Nets, Simmons’s failure to take a shot means that he’s only a theoretical fit when they’re not playing in Brooklyn and Manhattan. But all told I’d rather have the ball in Harden’s hands than Simmons.
I mentioned this as a red flag back then, but his stubbornness about shooting jumpers and free throws with different hands bugged me. Not in an irrational way but simply because improving with the jumper, even where your shooting mechanics aren’t perfect, is all about consistent, repeatable motion (see the Demon Kyzuzu as a perfect example). So doing it Simmons’s way means that he had to work twice as hard as everyone else to get the same results. Which is why he never did. Coaches had to have been drilling that into him for years and he just stubbornly refused to change his approach.
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