Im Your Father wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:Re: 76ers preferring to wait to the off-season to trade Simmons - hoping for Harden:
I just find myself shaking my head at Morey this year. While it's within the realm of possibility that Morey being super-patient on the Simmons trades works out just as he's hoping, he can't know it's going to work out, and if he makes no trade before the deadline, then this will mean he's wasted 2 years of Embiid's prime when he was brought into make the hard decisions that Elton Brand could not.
I consider Morey's Houston work to be among the best GMing performances of the 21st century, but his Philly work may end up being among the most disappointing.
I guess I sort of agree with you and it’s definitely frustrating. But my I guess my question is this?
Do we think that any of the pieces that were available thus far make them into contenders this year?
It seems like people are in agreement that last the Sixers WITH Ben Simmons are solidly not contenders.
If Morey makes a move for say McCollum do we really think that’s a contending team? Because if the answer is No, then doesn’t making that trade effectively end Embiid’s window?
I guess I can see the rationale (although I waiver on agreeing with it) that Morey’s better off trying to hit a home run at this stage, even if the odds are relatively slim.
Also, while I think the Laker’s are proof of why you don’t let your franchise player be your GM, I have to think that Embiid must have signed off on this approach. There’s no chance that he’s not being consulted every step of the way right?
None of this is to say that the Sixers shouldn’t have tried to keep Butler and move Simmons, but I think that was before Morey’s time?
The time to trade Simmons was before last year's playoff trauma. Simple as that. His stock has fallen drastically, as has other franchise's perception of the 76ers' leverage. This may seem like a "Well sure, given everything we know now.", but many of us said that one of the two stars needed to be traded after the 2020 playoffs, and speaking for myself, I had assumed that they brought Morey in to make the hard decision that no one earlier had had the balls to make.
So to me, by far the biggest decision Morey made was not taking seriously the idea that he was sitting on something of a ticking timebomb.
The fact that after the timebomb went off Morey's continued to drag his heels in the name of not trading Simmons until someone else gets desperate enough to offer something fitting for Simmons' prior trade value is the more fascinating spectacle, but it's largely just a gamble being made because Philly doesn't like any of the options realistically available to them at this point. Well and good to try this for a while, but the longer you try it, the more the reality of the consequences will sink in.
Your franchise player is the most injury-prone franchise player since Bill Walton, and if you don't trade Simmons until the off-season, then you've literally wasted what could easily become the healthiest year of his career (if Embiid actually managed to avoid another injury until next season) under the premise that Ben Simmons is so highly valued by other NBA teams that the 76ers will successfully him for assets that you see as more valuable than Simmons.
Maybe it pays off, but if it doesn't, Morey's going to look like a fool.
Re: if trading for McCollum closes the 76ers championship window, why do it? I'd suggest that to the degree McCollum not being good enough could be said to close an open championship window, we should also acknowledge that said championship window has already closed, and what Morey is praying is that the right trade will come along for Simmons that will pry it back open
That prayer can in theory last forever, but let it suffice to say that while Morey claims he can wait Simmons out for 4 years, he cannot. He'll get fired before then, and look like an idiot who strung along the 76ers franchise for years because he really had no plan for how to get the team where he was hired to get them.
