Philadelphia 76ers: No, Ben Simmons isn’t being traded to Atlanta

The Philadelphia 76ers are a team with needs.

They aren’t particularly proficient at passing, could use some 3-and-D fortification on the wings, and are quite literally the worst rebounding team in the association. If the team is going to shore up, stop treading water, and right the ship in what is shaping out to be the best season of Joel Embiid‘s career, they are going to have to do so soon, as the regular season is almost at its halfway mark.

Fortunately, the Sixers do, in fact, have a valuable trade chip that could quite literally reshape their roster to better fit Daryl Morey’s liking; all he has to do is finally accept one of the offers he’s surely discussed centered around Ben Simmons.

Unfortunately, the deal Morey specifically desires has yet to materialize, and it seems rather unlikely that one centered around a legit superstar like Damian Lillard or Bradley Beal will surface before the February 10th trade deadline, with more piecemeal deals currently flooding the rumor mill. One of those potential deals reportedly belongs to the Atlanta Hawks, the very team who knocked the Sixers out of the playoffs last season and threw this whole machine out of wack.

Could the Philadelphia 76ers make a deal with the devil, or should I say their fast rivals, the Atlanta Hawks? Potentially so, but probably not for the package the team is willing to offer up.

John Collins and Cam Reddish just don’t fit the Philadelphia 76ers’ roster and timeline.

On paper, or in a game of 2K, a frontcourt of Joel Embiid, John Collins, and Cam Reddish looks pretty good. The trio all have good size, can rebound the ball, and can shoot the 3 ball above the NBA average. Factor in second-year dynamo Tyrese Maxey and the most financially underrated marksman in the league in Seth Curry, and now you’re looking at a pretty intriguing lineup, especially with defensive specialists like Matisse Thybulle, Danny Green, and Paul Reed coming off the bench.

Unfortunately, the NBA isn’t 2K, and inserting those two onto the Philadelphia 76ers’ rotation – via a trade suggested by Shams Charania of The Athletic for Ben Simmons – is a whole lot harder to make work than one would think.

For one thing, Tobias Harris and Collins both play power forward, and neither is particularly adept at kicking it up a spot to play small forward. Of the two, Collins is a marginally better rebounder with a more effective outside shot, but he’s not talented when it comes to creating his own shot, which the Sixers seem to value, as they are pretty severely lacking in that category.

While Daryl Morey could conceivably swap Harris out for another player who better fits the team if he really likes Collins’ game, that would require finding a team who wants to take on his contract, let alone surrender something of value for his services.

Sidebar: Personally, I don’t think Tobias Harris is untradeable. I do think, however, that the return the Sixers would be looking at for his services would have to consist of veterans on a bad team, like Gary Harris and Terrence Ross from the Orlando Magic, and would likely require attaching a pick to get a deal done. For better or worse, moving Harris feels unlikely.

On the flip side, while Cam Reddish is both a Philly kid and an intriguing prospect with some very good games under his belt, he’s quite a bit younger than Embiid and not quite consistent enough to be the sort of playoff performer the Sixers are looking for. Even if Reddish has top-20 small forward upside and is draining 3s at a 37.9 percent clip, he’s still a work-in-progress player with a career effective field goal percentage of 46.0 and a total Raptor rating of -4.3 according to FiveThirtyEight, which is the eighth-worst mark in the NBA among qualifying players. Brandon Ingram, he is not… well, not yet, at least.

Now granted, could a Simmons-Collins-Reddish deal expand out and include more assets? Considering Collins and Reddish make $27.6 million combined in 2021-22, a two-for-one deal is technically possible, but I doubt even Hawks fans would consider such a trade sans any picks or additional players to be a fair deal, but what would make it so? Outside of Trae Young, the most attractive player on the Hawks’ roster for Philly’s needs is probably Bogdan Bogdanovic, who is certainly a nice player but isn’t the sort of difference-maker worthy of cashing out the team’s biggest asset.

No, outside of being offered up an absolute boatload of picks to go along with a hypothetical deal, the best path to a Hawks-Sixers trade would be to bring in a third team who is either willing to surrender a 3-and-D point guard for Harris or find one that likes either Collins or Reddish enough to surrender a player like Tyrese Haliburton to bring them into the fray.

But then again, if Haliburton is the apple of the Sixers’ eye – which he should be, since he’s the best-fitting player mentioned in this story – and the Kings are clearly enamored by the idea of landing Simmons, why would either party want to expand a deal out to three teams and give Sacramento’s preferred player to the Hawks? In short, they wouldn’t.

If John Collins and/or Cam Reddish try to force their way out of Atlanta, the Philadelphia 76ers should be on the phone in the hopes of helping the Hawks out. Both are fun fits alongside Joel Embiid and could help the team both now and in the future. But in a deal for Ben Simmons? Unless there are enough draft picks included to keep the team in the running for a Damian Lillard/Bradley Beal/James Harden trade this summer, or it involves landing the sort of playmaking, 3 point shooting wing the team is desperate for, I sort of doubt such a deal would come to pass, even if it would be incredibly exciting to see both on the court and the PS4 in the short-term.