Philadelphia 76ers fans don’t need this kind of stress around the Holidays.
When news initially broke that James Harden wanted out of Houston, it created an intriguing conundrum for fans of the Philadelphia 76ers: To trade Ben Simmons or not to trade Ben Simmons.
That, my friends, was the question.
Though some suggested that it should be Joel Embiid, not Simmons, included in a package for ‘The Bearded One’, for whatever reason, be it his playing style, his relationship with Michael Rubin, or Daryl Morey‘s glowing endorsements from his introductory press conference, that idea never really got much traction. No, realistic fans unfazed by suggestions that the Rockets would accept a package centered around Tobias Harris, Matisse Thybulle, and Tyrese Maxey knew from the jump that the only way we’d ever see Harden rocking a 13 red, white, and blue jersey is to give away a player like Simmons.
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To paraphrase the great Adrian Wojnarowski, you don’t often trade away a 24-year-old two-time All-Star regardless of the package.
For what it’s worth, Morey almost immediately shut down these fan-based questions, telling The Athletic (as per John Clark), “We are not trading Ben Simmons.” He even followed it up in his Reddit AMA session, telling a user (again, as per John Clark), “Both Ben (24) and Joel (26) are superstar players in the peak of their prime… both have a high probability to be in the top players of all time given how they have started and their age”.
While it’s not uncommon for any person in a position of power to lie through their teeth about not doing something until it’s official – think back to when the Eagles definitely weren’t firing Chip Kelly, and the Phillies had no intentions to part with Gabe Kepler – this felt different. When camp opened up, Doc Rivers had nothing but nice things to say about his team’s ‘facilitator,’ and for what it’s worth, those feelings have been reciprocated by Simmons himself, as he reportedly loves the faster pace of the team’s new offense.
After watching the Sixers playing about as well as anyone could have hoped in their first preseason game of the year against the Boston Celtics, hopes were beyond high for just how good this new, young core supplemented by veteran roleplayers could be in 2020-21 – with a deep playoff run a borderline inevitability.
And then, out of nowhere… Woj Bomb.
A day removed from a brutal Tim MacMahon story about Harden’s stranglehold over the Rockets organization dropped over at ESPN, the company’s top insider delivered his own Harden-centric story (alongside Ramona Shelburne) that included a little tidbit about the Sixers.
What was the tidbit? Oh, nothing big, just that “- the Sixers have signaled a willingness to include All-Star guard Ben Simmons in trade packages for Harden.”
Factor in a tweet from Shams Charania confirming that Simmons has been included in said conversations, and suddenly, Sixers Twitter was in an all-out fury. The sky was falling. Simmons was gone. The season was over before it even began.
To be fair, Woj literally postfaced his tweet by saying that “those talks have come nowhere close to a deal,” so any fans getting a trash can ready for a good ole’ fashion jersey burning needs to take a chill for a moment, but it is rather alarming that Simmons might not be as ‘untouchable’ as Morey had been suggesting all offseason.
… or maybe not.
Who knows, maybe the Rockets explicitly asked about Simmons, and Morey responded with “what are you offering?” as opposed to a hard and firm no. Maybe he counter-offered with a package of Simmons for Harden and additional assets, not the other way around. I love Simmons too, but if I could get back Harden, a young player, and every first-round pick not already committed to some other trade, it’d be hard to say no.
Maybe that’s what Woj meant by “a willingness to include All-Star guard Ben Simmons in trade packages”? But then again, again, if he didn’t plan on including Simmons in a trade, why even talk about it? Even an executive as tight-lipped as Morey has to know those conversations are going to leak one way or another, probably by someone within the Rockets’ organization to drum up additional interest. Do the Sixers really want to get Simmons fired up in the wrong way for no reason?
For what it’s worth, the Morey and the Sixers did make things abundantly clear that Simmons isn’t available shortly after Woj broke the news, but you can’t get that stink back in the bottle. John Middleton can say the Phillies only lost $145 million in 2020, but we all know that $2 billion figure is far closer to the reality – even if it’s really isn’t; that’s just the nature of news.
Sidebar: Literally eight hours ago, I was suggesting that the Sixers should avoid moving on from Shake Milton prematurely in a James Harden trade, and now I have to worry about whether or not Ben Simmons is going to be on the team on Christmas day? What world am I in?!?!
If you told me fresh off the afterglow of a near-perfect preseason debut that the basketball world would once again be infighting over whether or not the Philadelphia 76ers should trade Ben Simmons for James Harden again, I’d have told you you were crazy but yet *sigh* here we are. Again. Like clockwork. Until Harden is eventually moved, which probably won’t happen anytime soon, these rumors will periodically pop up over and over again, and unfortunately, Simmons’ name will remain a fixture of them regardless of how he plays or what the team genuinely wants to do. Can someone else just trade for James Harden already?