I think you can
Q12543 wrote:But boy, Simmons is almost a Giannis-sized conundrum.....Yes, he will absolutely help you win games and get you to the playoffs, but at some point that shooting....I just don't know if you can have one of your featured guys have that issue and win a title.
I think you
can if you can keep 3-4 good to great shooters on the floor with him at the same time, but I agree that's really tough to do. Towns might be one of the better big guys to match him up with because he can shoot so well from deep. Embiid can shoot from outside pretty well, but he's not nearly as good as Towns and he's
soso much better in the post and midrange. Plus Thybulle isn't really a great shooter so you can't play those two together much. The Sixers do have Green and Curry, which has definitely helped them survive Simmons' nonexistent shooting. But it is tough if you have a guy like that who just can't shoot at all.
Unfortunately, trading Russell for Simmons would take away our second-best deep threat too. I've criticized DLO up and down and don't want to get back into it here. But one thing I'll say for him is he's a very good shooter, which is what you need around Simmons.
For the record, I would trade DLO for Ben in a heartbeat. Even if you couldn't get the shooting around him that you'd need to compete at the highest level, that's still a more moveable contract than DLO's. Bottom line, I'm pretty confident our defense will never be good enough to win with Russell out there, while Ben would really help turn this defense around and there's at least a chance you could get the shooting around him to compete.
Don't worry though, when we win the lottery in a few days, we'll have another point forward to start thinking about!