Brad inherited Payton who is just a workhorse but probably not Brad's ideal archetype. You look at the guards Brad has spent assets to acquire as POBO and it's all +220lb framed players: White, Brogdon, Holiday, Jaden Springer, Scheierman, Hugo
Now that we have Simons, how has he been playing? Throw out the 1st five games, being a new team and role, and just looking at the last seven, Anfernee Simons is scoring 14 points per on 40/41/100% and -9 in 161 minutes, a total of 21 assists vs 7 turnovers and a total of 2 stocks (1 blk, 1 stl) ... so he's been okay, some good moments on offense and some bad moments on defense
Is his instant offense valuable, sure. But I think Simons weaknesses make me think his acquisition really was Brad just undoing the Jrue multiyear contract and not Brad really liking Simons. But I could be wrong, players in Simons style have a role in the league, Eddie House was a 2008 bench version of Anfernee Simons, and House was very useful player
But I'd still bet we are gonna get rid of Anfernee sooner or later.
Hal14 wrote:I wouldn't read much into the no press conference thing. Simons spoke to the media at media day. That was the first time Kevin Durant had a press conference as a member of the rockets too. Plenty of other guys who changed teams this offseason didn't have a big introductory press conference that was held way before media day either.
I think that that acquired Simons mostly to get off Jrue's contract but partly because Brad genuinely does like Simons as a player. I mean, let's think about it. Most of the guys Brad has acquired via trade/free agency over the past 3 years or so have been age 25-27. He seems to like acquiring guys in that range. Old enough that they're further along in their development that they're not a development project, which means less risk..they're ready to play now. But young enough that they're not gonna get hurt all the time, don't need rest days all the time and there's a chance that if things go well they could stick around with the org for the long haul - rather than having to constantly be replacing old guys with new old guys.
So he checks the age box. He checks the shooting box. We shoot more 3's than any team in history, Joe likes shooters/spacing..Simons is a shooter.
He also checks the position box - like, if we're losing Jrue (and White is getting older, JB had offseason knee surgery, Pritchard has never been a starter, etc.) it makes sense that you'd have to replace Jrue with another quality guard.
Simons isn't a great defender. But neither is Pritchard, neither was Brogdon when he was here, neither was Kyrie, IT, Kemba, etc. The Celtics in recent years have not shied away from guards who are really good offensive players but have some defensive limitations.
Bottom line, we're trying to win at least 1 more title while the Jays are in their prime. You need talent to win a title. We just lost a lot of talent (KP, Al, Jrue, Kornet, etc.). If we just trade Simons for a bag of chips or let him walk as a FA, you can pretty much kiss any title chances goodbye because then we'd have even less talent and the gap between the necessary talent to win a title and the talent on our roster would be even larger than it is now.
If we can trade Simons for a player (or let him walk in free agency and use that $ to acquire a new player) that results in us getting closer to having the necessary talent to win a title, then sure, go for it.
But:
a) that's much easier said than done and
b) if there was such a deal that was possible, it likely would have happened by now. Since rumor has it, we were trying to trade him all summer.
That's why I think there is a path to winning a title that could involve keeping Simons, resigning him to a team friendly contract this summer. Then maybe just adding 1 more piece along with a healthy Tatum and we're back in title contention.
But if you trade Simons (or let him walk as a FA) well now you've got to get Tatum back healthy and acquire *two* more good players..that's much harder to do than just acquiring 1 more good player..especially with the limited trade assets and financial flexibility that we have..
