Dear Mediocre and Lousy Teams, Trade Us Your Good Players Already
They all stink, and now it's time for them to suck it up and just offer us the good shit for Ben Simmons already.
Andrew Unterberger is a famous writer who invented the nickname 'Sauce Castillo' and is now writing for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the 'If Not, Pick Will Convey As Two Second-Rounders' section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.
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As annoyed as I was by both Ben Simmons and the Philadelphia 76ers over last offseason, it was really nothing compared to how furious I was at teams that have been irrelevant seemingly for decades never even ponying up a reasonable ante to get in the game for No. 25. Sacramento Kings? Sure, they're interested, as long as De'Aaron Fox and Tyrese Haliburton aren't involved. Minnesota Timberwolves? How does Malik Beasley and a bunch of dudes who might've turned out good if they were drafted by a better franchise sound? New Orleans Pelicans? I dunno if they ever really came up in discussions, but if they did you can bet Nickeil Alexander-Walker was mentioned and Brandon Ingram was not.
And 15 games into the season, those teams are basically where any reasonable person would've expected them to be: nowhere. The Pelicans are in a 2-13 freefall waiting for their ballooning big man to return to game shape, the Kings are 6-8 with talk of Luke Walton's seat temperature already heating up, and the Timberwolves are 4-9 with rumblings of Karl Anthony-Towns wanting out starting to get louder and louder. (That last part might just be Trill Bro Dude wish fulfillment/attempted Twitter manifestation, hard to tell.) Point is: They all stink, and now it's time for them to suck it up and just offer us the good shit for Ben Simmons already.
I can't say I don't understand the holdup. Simmons' playoff no-show, summer sulking and ongoing media games haven't made things easy on anyone, and neither has Daryl Morey's refusal to let the facade crack while insisting that his wildly unpopular young All-Star should demand a similar trade return to Anthony Davis or Paul George. The Sixers have probably been about as easy to deal with throughout this process as a legion of pop stans. But then again, if any of these other teams had put their best foot forward when coming to the table, maybe player and/or GM would've stopped trifling on our side for 10 seconds and actually tried to make progress towards getting something done to make everybody happy in this miserable situation. And for all involved, there is truly no time like the present.
For all his flaws, Ben Simmons in the regular season = wins. Not all of them, but enough of them: The Sixers have made the playoffs in all four of the regular seasons he's played. Obviously a lot of that is Joel Embiid, a decent (if rarely maximized) supporting cast and a management situation that, when not being tragic, has mostly been competent. But it's also about Ben: When engaged, his two-way play is strong enough to bulldoze lesser opponents and hold his own against good ones. Most importantly, he offers a lot of the stuff that bad young teams generally don't have: Defense, playmaking, organization. He's not going to turn any team from the 2007 Celtics to the 2008 Celtics on his own, but add Ben Simmons to a half-competent core, and he will most likely make them close to fully competent.
And when you're a team that's been nowhere forever, sometimes competence is worth stretching for. Look at the Knicks last year: A new coach and one high-level season from Julius Randle and all of a sudden they were a playoff team for the first time since Macklemore & Ryan Lewis were massive, unleashing close to a decade's worth of pent-up fan insanity on an unsuspecting public. The Pelicans, Kings and Wolves -- who have combined for about three good seasons total since 2008, and who are under all kinds of rising internal and external pressures to just stop sucking already -- could certainly use a taste of that.
Not just them, either: It's about time for Portland to throw in the artisanally embroidered towel, too. Damian Lillard can talk his game about the Blazers being some lab tinkering away from being this year's Phoenix, and they did get a nice-ish win at home against Toronto the other day. But this is a 7-8 team with a negative point differential -- one that's actually been close to fully healthy to start the season, too, which is something maybe three teams in the entire league can boast. Lillard will heat up eventually, and the late-season surge will probably take them from a 40-win to a 46-win team, and another first-round pantsing in the playoffs. It's time for them to get realistic already and try something different.
And guess what? If they're not particularly in on Simmons these days, we have another point guard to throw in who might be even more enticing now. A combination of Simmons and Tyrese Maxey should be an offer that any team serious about their future would have to give good, long, hard consideration to. Together, the pair could stabilize a team in the short-term and potentially raise their ceiling in the long-term. We've got other stuff, too: tantalizing prospects with still-untapped upside (Isaiah Joe, Matisse Thybulle, Jaden Springer if he can keep balling in Delaware a bit longer), legit rotation players on good contracts (Seth Curry, Shake Milton, Andre Drummond if you define "legit" flexibly), even a loose first-round pick or two. Once Daryl really gets to dancing, no team that's ready to make a 1-for-3 or 1-for-4 trade of their best player should be immune to our charms.
(I know that with every strong early-season performance of his, including Maxey in trade proposals becomes more of a non-starter for Sixers fans; tellingly, a recent WIP poll about trading the Simmons/Maxey combo for Lillard met with surprisingly close to a 50/50 response. Obviously he's totally off the table now for Lowry-type adds, but I don't see the logic in deeming him off-limits for true All-NBA players. This year's Simmons-less team, with Maxey's spot upgraded to Lillard, could seriously compete for a championship this year. Maxey is good and could be great, but it's a big "if" to hinge the remainder of Embiid's prime on when we can be reasonably assured that giving him Lillard as a running mate would get him there ASAP.)
Anyway, point is: if you're a bad team that needs to finally make the playoffs, or a pretty good team that needs to try something else already, it's time to pick up the phone and give us a ring ding already. Yes, it's going to be annoying, no, it's not going to be pleasant, but we've got the cure for what ails you -- in the most immediate sense, anyway -- wasting away on Twitch streaming and Instagram lurking in some basement somewhere, while his agent and our management battle via media leaks and high-road posturing. Take him off our hands. For our sake. For his sake. For your sake. Because it's the right thing to do. Because you should've fucking done it four months ago.