Ferry Avenue wrote:youngcrev wrote:Ferry Avenue wrote:That doesn't seem very threatening to me. In other words, I'm not losing any sleep about to play Simmons's new team by virtue of his presence on it.
Compare that to any player in the league regarded as a closer (LeBron, Harden, Durant, Butler, Leonard, George, Giannis, etc. -- even Jayson Tatum) and it's a completely different feeling. I'm concerned about those players' ability to beat me by themselves in the clutch. Simmons, not even close.
Giannis is regarded as a closer? News to me. Seems like that's Middleton's job to me, which has similar question marks to our team's set up. Embiid's a far better late game option than Giannis is in terms of scoring in the half court and making his free throws.
But anyway, those guys you listed are simply better than Ben, of course they're a bigger threat in general. Top-15 (and with some of the names, top-5) players are bigger threats than top-30 players.
If your point is that you worry more about scorers, sure. There's more potential for those types to have a hot shooting game and destroy you. In general I think people worry more about Donovan Mitchell than Rudy Gobert against the Jazz, even though Gobert is the best/most impactful player on their team. I'm not sure worry-level is a perfect barometer of impact.
Regardless, is someone trading us an elite player for Ben? I guess that's what I'm missing here. If Morey can get us a guy that's clearly better in a deal, he should probably do it. Until then, do we really need to harp so heavily on what Ben can't do that we ignore the things that he does do so well? I get the frustration with him, but he's clearly an impactful player in general. If you replace him with a guy that does the things he doesn't, but does none of things that he does do well (like say, Zach LaVine) you're left with a clearly worse overall product on the floor.
And I guess that's the issue when you boil it down, that this team as it's currently configured needs for Simmons to be a top player or it won't be competitive with the best teams in the league in a playoff series. Certainly when it drafted him #1 overall it envisioned that. He hasn't developed in that manner however.
Trust the process was the deal back then. Well we trusted the process, but it didn't result in enough firepower. The missing piece is precisely Simmons's lack of development.
That feels like your own misplaced expectation though. He was never going to be an elite perimeter scorer. Being drafted #1 doesn't change that. The other #1 pick that we had was supposed to be that guy. And then Jimmy was supposed to be that guy. And then based on the contract they gave Tobias (as a guy that's primary role is that if a scorer), I guess they thought to some extent he could be that guy.
That's not to say there wasn't an expectation that he'd be better than he currently is based on early returns. He's turned himself into a defensive stud, but the offensive improvement has been stagnant.
