76ciology wrote:HardenToSixers wrote:Al Horford was a horrible signing that was made to cater to Simmons in the event that Embiid went down. It was a horribly atrocious signing because the 3 of them plus Tobias couldn't effectively share the court, and even with better guard play I'm not convinced that it was a good signing.
Sure, if you want to remake the entire roster based off pairing Horford and Embiid go wild lol. But it's clearly not a logical enough pairing to do so and even the biggest reasonable Simmons dissenters at the time I don't think were eager to completely move off of him by that season.
If you want to build a team around Embiid, you can’t just build a team that can win with embiid but you need to be able to build a team without embiid.
This is why you can’t just surround embiid with role players or non-alphas like Jokic or Giannis. Embiid needs to play with a Fultz, Jimmy or Harden. And the team were hoping Ben could develop into an alpha like most here thinks he could be.
Al Horford (the type of big we need at PF now, a rim protector and stretch 4 with Biid and a perfect 5 man with Ben) and Tobias (a scorer who can fill Ben’s poor scoring with Biid and provide some of Biid’s scoring) were both the pieces to make it happen.
If we had Jimmy, instead of Josh Richardson that would solve everything. But Ben does not want Jimmy, because Ben does not want to defer his ballhanding to Jimmy (Embiid himself said this). Why? Look at how Ben is playing right now. Can that of play get him a super max?
You can also say the same thing if we had JJ instead of JRich..
With Embiid
Ben
Jimmy
Tobias
Al Horford
Embiid
Or
Ben
JJ
Tobias
Al Horford
Embiid
Without Embiid
Jimmy
Shake
Tobias
Ben
Al Horford
JJ
Shake
Tobias
Ben
Al Horford
Josh Rich was a pump and dump project of the Heat. Heat were targetting Jimmy before we even came into the picture, and they were giving JRich the “Dejounte Murray” treatment like how Pop pump and dump Dejounte last season.
To be fair JRich played some big games that allowed this team to beat top teams like the Celtics and the Christmas day game against the Bucks. But he was wildly inconsistent and his 13ppg on 11shots is just not good enough to play the role we need him to be
I think you are just explaining the same mistake the front office made.
We are only going to win a ring if Embiid is healthy and playing well. Find a guard/wing who complements Embiid instead of signing Horford. Although the front office makes it seem this way, it is not that difficult to find a backup and we could allocate resources there a lot more efficiently than signing Al Horford in place of a perimeter threat who elevates our championship ceiling.
I’m not saying that the options available to fill that role were good or would have worked out (I don’t even remember who other options were) but from a philosophical standpoint of how we should have filled that role, I believed it then and I stand by it now. I know you have your thoughts on how Embiid should be paired with a rim protecting big and respect it, but especially then when Embiid was more mobile and a more reliable defensive anchor, I don’t think we were solving for the correct problem with the Horford signing to elevate our championship odds.
I certainly won’t pose any arguments against that keeping Jimmy and/or trading Ben back then would’ve been the right move, but that’s a whole separate can of worms that makes me sad to think about lol.
