I thought only Trump got your ire like this.I am sure Embiid is like, "Fuck Ben Simmons, the guy refused to take a shot in the final quarter of four straight playoff games."
How frustrated would you be to have your season end because the supposed "all world" point guard was passing up dunks and scared to shoot the ball in almost 50 minutes of crunch time? And then after this, the "all world" point guard was making demands of the team, like he carried the team the entire year and the loss was squarely on all of the other players?
Fuck Ben Simmons. This is ridiculous. I can't believe anyone could defend Simmons here. He's got a 4 year deal. He has regressed over the past couple of seasons. He literally does not shoot. And he famously flamed out against a very poor Atlanta team, costing his team a chance to advance in the playoffs. And despite and after all of this, he's acting like he's Lebron in 2010. It's comical.
No one is defending Ben Simmons. I'm only interested to see what happens. There was a short, fantasy-type discussion where we discussed which teams would take Simmons if they didn't have to give up anything for them (virtually all that could make cap space) but that was purely hypothetical.
Ben may not be a top 10 player like he could be if he learned to shoot some but he's still a really good player (top 30? top 40?). He's exercising his rights to not play and the ball is in PHI's court. As I said upthread, I can totally see Morey sticking it to Ben for as long as possible and not coming down from his exorbitant trade demands but if PHI underperforms, that position is harder and harder to maintain.
It's interesting theatre and it's also an interesting case studies and having to keep your star employees happy.
First of all, Embiid seems happy as a clam to take as many jumpers and 3Ps as he can. It helps him save his energy (which may be a conditioning issue, something that people have talked about Embiid for a long time).Embiid understands how Philly has tried to build their team around Simmons' weaknesses, had to expand his own game and take more three pointers than he may have wanted so that Simmons can drive to the hoop and maybe-not-shoot. If he does believe that holding on to Simmons cost them at resigning Butler, that would also make sense.
Second, it would take quite of bit of revisionist history to cast Butler's leaving on Simmons. No one in PHI (except maybe Reddick and he was gone too) made a play to get Butler back at any point during the season or (from what Butler says) immediately after the playoffs ended. To the best of my recollection, I don't remember Embiid lobbying for Butler to stay. If you listened to Butler talk to Reddick, Butler saw the writing on the wall pretty early on.