HotelVitale wrote:
This feels like an argument we don't need to have, difference is obvious here. We're talking about current value, not value at the time a contract was given out: Wiggins now is obviously a bad contract and no teams would happily/readily take him on with compensation, while Simmons is the opposite and many many teams would line up to give us assets to take him on. Horford is obviously the former. And at the time Wiggins' contract was a reluctant bet made on someone who was not a plus player yet but had a chance of becoming one, Simmons' contract was an easy decision that any other team would do for a player who was already an all-star and had a chance of becoming better.
Wiggins is naturally a more extreme example but my point is that a lot of teams/GMs either are bad at evaluating a player or are not particularly interested in winning and taking the corresponding risks. What a player might get from one or more teams and what his value is for a team that wants to build a contender might be quite different. Team specific differences based on the team playstyle/roster also exist. The Jazz gave Gobert a huge contract and although they, and probably a lot of other teams in their place, felt compelled to do it, i doubt that it will get them closer to winning a title..
The appeal Simmons might have is based on him further improving on his game and the belief that he would look much a better on a team with some reasonably good fit around him. Without these two assumptions his contract doesnt necessarily have that much appeal, at least imo.
HotelVitale wrote:Also this idea that all max players on a contending team have to be enormous value 1st options is ahistorical and cuts against the norm. Most contenders are carrying at least two full max slots and usually have at least one other very large contract; one of those 3 players usually needs to be mega-elite but the others don't. The Warriors were maxing Steph, KD, Klay and Dray at one point, and before KD they also had Iggy on a near max, the Cavs had Lebron, Kyrie, and Love on full maxes, Raptors had Kawhi as their main guy plus Lowry and Gasol making near-max $ (plus Ibaka making a ton of $, and they added Siakam to the max list the next year), and so on. We obviously don't have a Lebron or Kawhi now...but if one becomes available we'll need a Simmons-type to either be his elite sidekick or be trade bait to get him to come.
Yes it is more complicated that the way i phrased it. If you have a lot of good roleplayers or stars (like the Warriors) on bargain contracts and an all time great as a first option you dont need your other max player(s) to offer huge extra value. For the Sixers situation though it is still true imo. The Sixers cant afford Simmons to be a fairly paid player if they want to do anything. So they still need to find the path that will give them the higher likelihood to get this extra value.
It is true that you can still trade Simmons (free agency is not really possible for the next couple of years at least) for a true max player like you said, however this hinges on that player being available and that Simmons have the necessary value. Right now i think Simmons value is enough more or less to get Harden (mostly due to the situation the Rockets found themselves in), however it is doubtful whether a better player will be available in the near future and whether Simmons value would be enough at that time, as his trade value is steadily declining over the last years.
