Spurs Required Ben Simmons Or Joel Embiid To Trade Kawhi Leonard To 76ers

[Raps in 4]

If they traded Simmons for him, the Sixers would be champions this year.

[duppyy]

Lol I wouldn't trade Norman Powell for Simmons, that dude is trash and he no real value without even a 10ft jumper.

lol this dude.

Also, I get this is the cool hindsight thing to revisit right now, but if Simmons does improve and implements a jumper in the next year or two, I'm not sure that one year of going to the ship with Kawhi is better than team controlled Ben Simmons for 7 years.

Usually, when a player improves on his jumper, there is a year to year increase in attempts or 3ptfg%, he's done neither of these two things this season. So what hope is there that he will improve? He wasted the regular season by not even trying to make any 3s. It's the best time to try and improve.

I don't mind eating crow if I'm wrong but he doesn't look like he will ever become a respectable shooter and it doesn't look like he will ever want to take those shots, so where is all this hope coming from? Just the fact that he's a good player in all the other aspects of basketball doesn't mean he will become a respectable shooter.

Maybe after breaking up with Jenner he will focus his time in the gym now and improve that jumper.

[duppyy]

The Sixers Chief Dr was handling Kawhi’s injury/rehab at certain points last year, my guess is he reported back to the Sixers on the condition of his quad and any tendon issues he might have.

My guess is the news wasn’t great.

Handling or mishandled? Either way, the chief should get fired if he gave such bad intel.

[DoItALL9]

Lmao im not even doing that trade even if he was 5 years younger and he wants to come to Philly.

Simmons and Embiid will both be better than him individually in 5-10 years

This take is sizzling

Sent from my LG-H872 using RealGM mobile app

[nzahir]

So Spurs think Derozan is the same caliber player as Simmons/Embiid? We sure about this team?

No, this just means the spurs didn't want prospects and they said as much. CLearly simmons and Embiid were proven enough and well they're different level. This is old news if you heard anything the spurs said when looking to trade him.

What an awful dumb idea by the spurs

Put a cap on their potential

Can't win it all with Derozan as your best or 2nd best guy. He is a #3 guy talent wise, but gets paid about 28M a year and not good off the ball or at defense

Cavs should have gone all in with Love, #8, Cedi, JR, and future protected 1st for Kawhi and Green. More than what the Raps gave them. Get lebron to stay for 1 year, go all in.

[Anticon]

No one had any clue of what Kawhi would look like last summer. If someone told you he would produce like this, they were speculating.

Only the Raptors took the risk because there virtually was no risk for them, despite all the fury it unleashed. They wasn't any risk they were sacrificing their future as it was obvious there wasn't one without an upgrade.

To give up Tatum, Simmons, etc. was too much of a risk. The team that really messed up was the Lakers - they should have traded every asset they had and not given it a second thought.

[LakersSoul]

No one had any clue of what Kawhi would look like last summer. If someone told you he would produce like this, they were speculating.

Only the Raptors took the risk because there virtually was no risk for them, despite all the fury it unleashed. They wasn't any risk they were sacrificing their future as it was obvious there wasn't one without an upgrade.

To give up Tatum, Simmons, etc. was too much of a risk. The team that really messed up was the Lakers - they should have traded every asset they had and not given it a second thought.

Grumpy old man wasn’t going to trade with the Lakers.

[NapoleonII]

The most important thing in running an NBA franchise: you don't know what you don't know. It's all about taking the most educated risks that you can.

Spurs used to be masters of it.

The problem was they couldn't face the reality of the bridge to Leonard being burned. It was probably a multitude of things, mishaps, missed opportunities, bad communication.

But they should have seen the writing on the wall and not gone in for Derozan. Hell, letting Leonard sit out for two years would have been better -> better draft picks, better messaging to the rest of the league/players.

OR maybe Leonard would have given in and played this year, got them to the WCF, hell maybe he would have destroyed the warriors and gotten a title again with Pop/Aldridge/a healthy Murray. Maybe they all would have kissed and made-up with a super-max and a championship ring.

Anything would be better than their current situation.

[NoDopeOnSundays]

So it would have been a line up of Embiid, Kawhi and possibly Bulter coming out of the east against GSW.

They would still have the assets that got them Butler & Harris.

[dhsilv2]

So Spurs think Derozan is the same caliber player as Simmons/Embiid? We sure about this team?

No, this just means the spurs didn't want prospects and they said as much. CLearly simmons and Embiid were proven enough and well they're different level. This is old news if you heard anything the spurs said when looking to trade him.

What an awful dumb idea by the spurs

Put a cap on their potential

Can't win it all with Derozan as your best or 2nd best guy. He is a #3 guy talent wise, but gets paid about 28M a year and not good off the ball or at defense

Cavs should have gone all in with Love, #8, Cedi, JR, and future protected 1st for Kawhi and Green. More than what the Raps gave them. Get lebron to stay for 1 year, go all in.

While I'd agree it was a bad decision on some levels. They'd assured Aldridge they were going to contend. Pop has limited years left. They make more money being in the playoffs. 1 team wins a year. The spurs have proven time and time again that lingering can work for them. Though I 100% was against derozan....

[RaptorsLife]

Spurs in win now mode

So they trade for demar Derozan

Makes sense lmao

[DROB27]

The most important thing in running an NBA franchise: you don't know what you don't know. It's all about taking the most educated risks that you can.

Spurs used to be masters of it.

The problem was they couldn't face the reality of the bridge to Leonard being burned. It was probably a multitude of things, mishaps, missed opportunities, bad communication.

But they should have seen the writing on the wall and not gone in for Derozan. Hell, letting Leonard sit out for two years would have been better -> better draft picks, better messaging to the rest of the league/players.

OR maybe Leonard would have given in and played this year, got them to the WCF, hell maybe he would have destroyed the warriors and gotten a title again with Pop/Aldridge/a healthy Murray. Maybe they all would have kissed and made-up with a super-max and a championship ring.

Anything would be better than their current situation.

This team nearly won 50 games while adding nine new players and the starting PG missing the entire season .

The young guys will come back better the situation isn’t bad like you think

[NapoleonII]

The most important thing in running an NBA franchise: you don't know what you don't know. It's all about taking the most educated risks that you can.

Spurs used to be masters of it.

The problem was they couldn't face the reality of the bridge to Leonard being burned. It was probably a multitude of things, mishaps, missed opportunities, bad communication.

But they should have seen the writing on the wall and not gone in for Derozan. Hell, letting Leonard sit out for two years would have been better -> better draft picks, better messaging to the rest of the league/players.

OR maybe Leonard would have given in and played this year, got them to the WCF, hell maybe he would have destroyed the warriors and gotten a title again with Pop/Aldridge/a healthy Murray. Maybe they all would have kissed and made-up with a super-max and a championship ring.

Anything would be better than their current situation.

This team nearly won 50 games while adding nine new players and the starting PG missing the entire season .

The young guys will come back better the situation isn’t bad like you think

True, you might win 50 games against next year.

But my best educated guess is you guys don't come close to a finals for the next 5. Kawhi Leonard is one game away from one, and
will probably have the chance another 2-3 times in his career.

[ZemGOAT]

Lmao im not even doing that trade even if he was 5 years younger and he wants to come to Philly.

Simmons and Embiid will both be better than him individually in 5-10 years

This take is sizzling

Sent from my LG-H872 using RealGM mobile app

Yeah idk anymore about Ben but I still think Embiid can be a superstar

[Chinook]

The most important thing in running an NBA franchise: you don't know what you don't know. It's all about taking the most educated risks that you can.

Spurs used to be masters of it.

The problem was they couldn't face the reality of the bridge to Leonard being burned. It was probably a multitude of things, mishaps, missed opportunities, bad communication.

But they should have seen the writing on the wall and not gone in for Derozan. Hell, letting Leonard sit out for two years would have been better -> better draft picks, better messaging to the rest of the league/players.

OR maybe Leonard would have given in and played this year, got them to the WCF, hell maybe he would have destroyed the warriors and gotten a title again with Pop/Aldridge/a healthy Murray. Maybe they all would have kissed and made-up with a super-max and a championship ring.

Anything would be better than their current situation.

This team nearly won 50 games while adding nine new players and the starting PG missing the entire season .

The young guys will come back better the situation isn’t bad like you think

True, you might win 50 games against next year.

But my best educated guess is you guys don't come close to a finals for the next 5. Kawhi Leonard is one game away from one, and
will probably have the chance another 2-3 times in his career.

But how is winning 50 games and having good young guys to develop "worse than anything?" It sounds like a way better situation than most teams.

[The_Hater]

Well that was dumb. I can understand holding out for Fultz plus. Or asking for Saric/Cov/MIA plus. Asking for Embiid or Simmons is asinine.

Asking for Embiid? Sure. But after watching them mortgage the future for Harris and Butler entering UFA status, maybe they should have considered a Simmons package.

Remember the whole thing with a Kawhi trade was that it was widely seen as a major, major risk of being only a 1 year rental. Things are going really well in TOR now so the team is legitimately hopeful they can keep him, but at the time a) he was intent on going to a LA team b) was still possibly very injured (or at least we didn't know what was happening) and c) had just thrown a weird fit to force his way out of the most respected team in the league and didn't seem likely to be making nice with his next team.

I know that's a risk worth taking for a guy like Kawhi, but let's remember how much of a risk it was and not rewrite the original scenario because the less likely thing (Kawhi being happy with his new team) was actually what came to pass. (TOR had a much much easier choice because Derozan was obviously not taking them anywhere and was like 8 years older than Simmons, virtually no reason to hesitate on taking the Kawhi risk there.)

I get where you’re coming from, that’s why I said the Sixers should consider it, not necessarily do it. And I understand that Simmons is in a much different part of his career than Derozan as well.

But do understand that a huge majority of Toronto fans never put the trade is the ‘major major risk’ category and still don’t. The team with Derozan had gone as far as it could with fridge allstar level talent so almost everyone viewed whatever risk was involved as completely necessary to both move forward and move on.

And if Kawhi leaves, which is likely, you already have an age 30 Derozan and his contract off the books and you start over. But just like Philly with the Butler and Harris trades, you can’t reap rewards without some sort risk.