Would you trade John Wall & 3 - 4 1st rounders for Ben Simmons?

Dude Michael Jordan would slap the crap out of Ben Simmons for the stuff he did

 

Is this your attempt at humor or is this truly an ignorant inquiry? If it's the latter:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/introducing-raptor-our-new-metric-for-the-modern-nba/

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-our-raptor-metric-works/

 

Put him on Ignore. That's what I did on I believe his 2nd post that I read.

 

It's all good. I was just making sure I addressed his question correctly. I didn't want to assume that he was making a poor attempt at being funny or, worse, assume I don't know what I'm talking about when it came to basketball. On the flip side, ignorance happens to the best of us and I'm always glad to lend a helping hand.

 

Fantastic! You point out garbage stats saying that an obviously garbage player is good, and the reaction of the junk-science crowd is ‘ignore’. Because that’s what real science is all about: when your theory doesn’t match reality you cover your eyes and ears.
Really, really weird cult we are witnessing here.
What’s wrong with you people, just watch the f-ing games!

 

Funny. Not true, though.

 

They should do a free throw shooting contest
I got my money on Kwame

 

Going to get real ugly now.

 

Okay! Okay! John Wall, "the new and improved with new driveway and paint" Daniel House, Garuba and 3 first round picks!! Let's get 'er done Murray!!!

 

I do not think Morey will trade with us unless we give them Wood and Green and3 FRP....i do not trust Morey

 

These are some really weird assumptions you're making here. Why do you think they don't watch the games? Why are you assuming their theories don't match the data, maybe they watch the games and they think he's good? Then the data backs them up. Aren't you the one who's covering your eyes and ears because the data doesn't match up with what you're seeing?

 

need about 4 t0 5 teams to get Wall and Ben Simmons traded

 

yeah, let’s elaborate to make it clear.
Ben Simmons is a talented, athletic 6-11 player, who is indeed "good". We all see that he is good and the data confirms it. He is garbage in high leverage situations, 4th qtrs of playoff games, i.e when it matters. That’s plain obvious to everyone who watches the games. That’s the big disconnect here.

The big problem with these alphabet soup metrics is not that they are technically wrong, it’s not that there are errors in the spreadsheets. The problem is that they crunch meaningless numbers and fail to provide any useful insight on how to win, but more specifically how to win in meaningful situations, i.e. the playoffs.

Ben Simmons is one example. Rudy Gobert is another example, another nerd favorite. I see Gobert, I see he’s 7-1, with 100ft wingspan and decent mobility for his size. I don’t need metrics to tell me that he can be useful. Where the metrics completely fail is to acknowledge that Rudy Gobert is not a problem when it matters. We all saw this. The guy has no ball skills and it is easy to render him completely useless if you needed. Players in this league have no respect for Rudy Gobert, everyone sees he’s a klutz, and everyone knows that you need ball skills to win in the playoffs. Everyone that is, except the clueless stat nerds that hang onto their useless spreadsheets.

Going back, to when this whole BS started, with Shane Battier and the Michael Lewis article. What was the point of that? What did it tell us? That Shane Battier was good even though he didn’t fill-up the traditional box score? Everyone knew that. All coaches liked Shane. He’s a lottery pick, from Duke, it’s not like he was was some undiscovered gem, and some fancy spreadsheets figured out that he has value. But we also knew that he’s a complementary player, nothing more.

Guys like Shane, Simmons, Gobert these are "good" players in certain situations, but you can’t win with them as your main guys in the playoffs. That’s what the eye-test tells you. The problem with all the WAR and RAPTOR bs is that now you have these useless numbers that put them on top of some useless rankings, so they get max deals and completely screw-up the teams cap sheets.

That’s the problem. If you go through the 38 pages of this threat you see that people acknowledge that Simmons has some value, esp. in regular season, but they don’t want him at his salary number for a player who you can’t count on in 4th qtrs of playoff games. To come here like that stedy dude and say but “wait, he has such and such RAPTOR rating" that’s completely ridiculous. Is the goal to win at basketball and in the playoffs or is the goal to win at RAPTOR?

 

At this point Morey has to at least consider John Wall and a first rounder….

 

The problem with this assessment is being able to shoot is not a useless stat, its the most important skill and Ben Simmons doesn't have it. It's not about main guy or second guy. This is a max player that destroys his team on offense because the D collapses into the paint because they don't have to guard him outside. Over 90% of his shots are in the paint. It's not 4th Qtr, its the entire game. You don't spend $150M on people you cannot rely on from jump.

 

Just Michael Jordan? Hakeem would slap the crap out of Ben Simmons. Kobe would call him soft as charmin.
Everyone thinks that the 76'ers haven't tried any of the things we want to try. They went out during the off season and got the team multiple vet shooters. They put the ball in his hands ala Giannis. They cleared the floor for the guy. They let him run pick'n rolls. I mean for Gosh Sakes everything this board is suggesting this team should try to do with Ben Simmons. Philly has tried!
Ben believes he is the second Lebron James. His defense is spectacular and yes would be an asset to this team. I agree. The problem is he is way over rated as the facilitator.
Simmons wants the ball in his hands. (As said in Embiid's comments) As stated he wants to have a team built around him. He will stunt the growth of guys like KPJ and Green who have yet to establish themselves. If it were say 3 years down the line where both KPJ and Green knew where they stood and knew the Rockets were their team, then yes push for Simmons. The problem is we are just not there yet. If Simmons were that easy to flip for what we wanted then Morey would have done that trade along time ago and so would Rafael Stone. NBA teams are hesitant to trade for Simmons and probably do not want to give every asset that Morey is asking for. Even Desperate teams like Sacramento or the Hornets or even Toronto havent put an overwhelming offer for Ben Simmons that Morey likes.
You Entertain a Wall for Simmons trade straight up. You however do not give up picks with that trade. Those picks might be what the team will need to then flip Simmons for what we really want.

 

It will just not work. Stone and Morey will know exactly what each other think about the value of Simmons or similar players. I’m certain they both value him as an inflated asset.

Morey has to continue acting like he believes Simmons has true star value, he will find some dumb "stats are not basketball" GM to meet him at least halfway, but it won't be Stone imo.

Morey will get a great first + a heavily protected first + two rotation players for Simmons. The team that acquires him can get a similar return plus one more pick in a year's time. Morey is just being Morey, haggling to get the best value asap.

I will say though that it's a strategic mistake to allow this to spill into a potentially title contending season. Whatever they they get back for Simmons, Embiid will flourish further and they will be harder to beat in a contentious playoff series. Don't let this go all the way to deadline imo.

 

No, exactly that’s what I’m saying!!! Shooting is a skill, these BS metrics underestimate basketball skills. So we have to accept that guys like Simmons and Gobert are super-valuable because of some BS metrics, when it is plain obvious that they don’t have ball skills…

The point about the 4th qtrs is that that’s when the rubber meets the road and everything gets exposed and things are obvious to everyone. You can argue back and forth that the lack of ball skill is compensated by advanced "invisible" skills, that can be argued. But when it[s winning time and you’re exposed as useless, to pretend that that’s not the case because of RAPTOR and WAR, that’s bonkers…

 

Here is the rub on Simmons if any of the said players were to really “slap” him, then he would press assault charges against said NBA legend. Simmons don’t want to change. Everyone around him has “slapped” him and this is his resonance.

 

If sorry but if you had bothered to read what I posted you would see that I posted REGULAR SEASON metrics. Never did I mention this has anything to do with playoff performances. I never tried to trick or manipulated the data to fit any kind of narrative. If you want me to pull post season data for you I can do that too though I don’t think we were ever in a disagreement as to what kind of player Simmons is/was. As for “these BS metrics undervalue skill”, what skill are we talking about? Simmons has, essentially two skills: defense and play making. The former has always been hard to quantify though every metric I’ve seen has shown/proven Simmons to be a very good defender. The latter skill has been quantifiable at various levels: from the basic box score stat of assists and turnovers to something more complex like NBA’s hockey assist.

This whole “BS” started because you replied back to me like a jackass as if I spewed out numbers without watching the game. So in kind, I returned the favor by asking if you were being a jackass or were you really ignorant of what I was posting.