I can't believe a player with such a high profile bed-******** thinks he can demand a move like this. Simmons has shown time and again that he is afraid of the big moment, won't work to develop an outside shot and is standoffish when his flaws are made public. What was Doc supposed to say last year when asked if Simmons was a championship point guard? By being too afraid to take an open layup Simmons showed that he isn't even a conference finals point guard! The Morey hate is also strange. I don't think he was ever going to get Harden back for Simmons because of the bad blood between him and Tilman. Now he's sitting on a distressed player who, without personal animosity involved, might've been the centerpiece of a James Harden trade and has lost a ton of value because of very high profile failures. Is it Morey's fault that Ben Simmons simply won't shoot?
I'm pretty sure this could of been managed way differently. Doc was supposed to stay politically correct and not try to motivate Simmons through the media. Morey should have been better about making Simmons feel good about himself. Joel Embiid can say whatever the **** he wants because he is the franchise player. The reality is that both Doc and Morey **** the bed and pissed off an agent and a player. What's the point of that? Yeah, he isn't a championship point guard, a great player, etc etc, that doesn't mean that you go and continue tanking the value of a depreciating asset. His value had definitely depreciated after that playoff run, but now it's in the gutter when Doc/Morey flushed the rest of whatever remaining good value he had left. If he is truly willing to sit out, then teams have no incentive to provide juicy trade to the 76ers. He isn't the missing piece to anyone's championship formula to give up decent talent for him if the end result is the same, nor does it make sense to give multiple valuable picks in the future to see what if.
Doc and Daryl should stop coddling. To say the 'politically right thing' is disingenuous, because everyone (including the reporters and fans) sees right through it. They weren't even rude about the Simmons comments. The person to blame is Simmons, (and Elton Brand for giving that contract). Talk about Simmons being unprofessional, he knows he can not show up for work and still get paid a handsome amount... so why not. He believes he's above playing for Philly, but not above taking their money. This is a guy who has a lot of spite. If I was an employer, STAY AWAY.
Agree with all of this except if you are Doc and Daryl you are stuck in a bad marriage where the woman can cheat and leave you and take the kids and get half of everything. They are essentially bargaining for marital assets at this point in a divorce. Simmons can do whatever he wants and tank his value. Some stupid team will take him but Sixers are stuck in place and will lose big time no matter what happens. Simmons is a dud and the fantasy on their board thinking anyone like Lillard is coming there is insane. It looks like right now Cleveland, Sacramento, Minnesota and a couple of other teams are getting baited up. I'd love for us to be in a 3 way to dump Wall but want no part of Simmons. That is quickly going to become a negative asset.
A 3-way is normally a good thing (pun). I'm OK if the Rockets is not the team that gets Simmons. If we're going with the relationship analogy; the one that come to mind, is the next girlfriend (say the Wolves) thinking she can change the Guy (Simmons), even though she see exactly what the guy is doing to his current wife (76ers).
when doc rivers was hired, i knew the sixers wouldnt do much those clippers teams when cp3 was there had amazing talent( in 2015 that clippers team was more talented than us), but doc is a subpar coach. If the sixers would have hired ty lue( they probably come close to making the finals) doc has lost so many 3-1 leads in his career its amazing that he keeps getting hired
Joe Lacob: Ben Simmons Trade Doesn't Really Fit What We're Doing Joe Lacob spoke with the San Francisco Chronicle and referenced the Golden State Warriors' potential interest in trading for Ben Simmons. Lacob referred to Simmons not by name but as the “Defensive Player of the Year candidate in Philadelphia.” “I think we are always looking at everything to see if we can improve our team. We would always look,” Lacob told Rusty Simmons. Sources say the 76ers have had an exorbitant asking price for Simmons. The Warriors would likely be required to send either Andrew Wiggins or Draymond Green along with several young players and future picks. “In some ways, it doesn’t really fit what we’re doing. He makes a lot of money. And, can he finish games? I don’t know,” said Lacob. “He’s very talented. The problem is: We have Draymond. Draymond and him are very similar in the sense that neither one really shoots and they do a lot of the playmaking. That’s one issue. The salary structure is another.”
It's more like this. 1. The wife (Simmons) finds about some drafts of divorce papers and somebody tells her they've seen her husband with a hotter woman. (Harden trade). Husband (Philly) denies everything, tells her he still loves her and she's the one. They patch up. 2. Then the wife hears about how someone asks her husband if he sees this marriage lasting and being successful, to which the husband answered "I don't know the answer to that" 3. Wife overhears husband say, "I don't know how do I say this, but somebody was supposed to drive the station wagon because the green light was on, but they hesitated and we got rear-ended. That's how the family car got totalled" (Embiid) Soooo, you're the wife. What do you do?
Except that somewhere before #2, the husband has said nothing but praising the wife about how hot she was.
Kyrie for Simmons actually makes a lot of sense for both teams. Sixers need more offense. Nets need more defense. Nets already have two top scorers. Simmons just needs to play defense, grab rebounds, and run fast breaks. Kyrie paired with Embiid would be a devastating scoring combo. Salaries match. And both guys carry some risk.
It's actually, husband tells the wife they can't afford to have her lose her job again because she wants to stay at home and she has repeatedly refused to work but wants a rich lifestyle. To spite the husband, who made reasonable requests after years of patiently waiting, she refuses and starts the drama. The husband drafting divorce papers came after years of warnings. Simmons and Philly's issues with his shooting was behind closed doors but believe me if you think we discuss something here and they didn't discuss it long before we did you are being naive. Organizations are not stupid, they are desperate. We were all excited when Ben came out and all liked him and probably all of us would have drafted him too. Put yourself in the Sixers situation. You had every reason to expect he would progress like normal NBA players and fix his weaknesses. He didn't and they were too happy with the future of the team to make the hard decision of trading him that would have helped them before they gave him the max contract. The "false" praise he received just made it seem crazy to go nuclear with him after you liked everything else. Porzingis, Portions, and some of these other players are a symptom of what the automatic max does. You take inferior players that have a contract come up and the player pool is so limited that almost everyone in the NBA is either on a max or min contract. There is no correlation to reality or incentive.
I have no problem with what Simmons is doing. Frankly I respect it a lot more than guys like AD and Harden. I am not a fan of passive aggressive stuff. Harden's i want to be traded maybe i'll come to training camp late and out of shape so haha on you. Simmons is saying I'm out, don't pay me if you don't want to. Sure, Simmons could not suck at shooting. But that's easy for me to say. I could not suck at being an NBA player, too, I guess if it was as easy as just wishing for something. From Doc's remarks per the twitter above, they "just" hired him a FT coach? Wtf. I'm not saying Simmons shouldn't have shown some improvement, but this concept that all players that make it to the NBA should improve their shooting doesn't make sense to me. Some do. Some don't. But to be like this is only Simmons fault doesn't make sense. He was this player when he signed the contract, when they put the team together, when DM took over, when Doc took over, etc. Doc's comments weren't misrepresented either, they were his comments. Doc's coaching style, which at no point did you ever really think would work well for a Ben Simmons personality, is his coaching style. DM's hardball stance was a bad decision. The fact they were ready to trade him and told him he was likely to be traded (i think for Harden) early last season plays a role. Etc. Etc.
Doesn't sound like Morey is being very successful at carrying out his plans. Got away from one headache and inherited another.
