The 76ers reportedly asked the Trail Blazers for three first-round picks and a package that would send CJ McCollum to Philly for Simmons.
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The Ben Simmons – Philadelphia 76ers standoff continues, as the All-Star guard still refuses to report to the team as it prepares for the 2021-22 season. Simmons has made it clear that he has no interest in re-joining the team, and has reportedly even packed up his house in Philadelphia with it expected to be put up for sale soon, per Stadium’s Shams Charania.
In trade talks with the Portland Trail Blazers, the Philadelphia 76ers reportedly wanted three first-round picks and three pick swaps in exchange for Ben Simmons. ? https://t.co/AtO1vdF9Zg
— Alex Kennedy (@AlexKennedyNBA) October 8, 2021
While Simmons continues to wait out the Sixers while the franchise tries to either convince him to re-join the team or find a trade for him, there hasn’t been much progress on the trade front. The Sixers reportedly asked the Portland Trail Blazers for three first-round picks and three pick swaps in a package that would send guard CJ McCollum to Philly in exchange for Simmons, but Portland turned that proposal down, per Charania.
It’s not surprising that the Trail Blazers turned that offer down, as the Sixers asking price for Simmons hasn’t been met by any team in the league. Philadelphia wants an All-Star calibre player in return for the All-Defensive guard, in addition to multiple first-round draft picks, but the needle hasn’t moved yet on making a deal.
Other teams like the Indiana Pacers, who have been linked to Simmons, reportedly don’t have the high-level talent the Sixers are looking for, per Marc Stein, as they’ve been offering Malcolm Brogdon and Caris LeVert in exchange for Simmons.
Based on the fact that the Sixers haven’t lowered their asking price for Simmons, it appears as though Philly isn’t in any sort of rush to make a deal just for the sake of it. This means this saga could carry into the regular season.
Pacers’ forward Caris LeVert is reportedly sidelined for an undetermined amount of time due to a stress fracture in his back, per multiple reports. A timeline isn’t definitive yet, and more testing is expected to take place but the reports suggest that there is “optimism” that it was just a minor setback and he’ll be ready to go for the start of the regular season. That was a sigh of relief for Indiana, but it is still unfortunate for the team to have so many missing pieces heading into training camp.
Injuries have been unkind to the Indiana Pacers. Going back to the Orlando bubble when the Pacers were the fourth seed in the East, the team was without All-Star forward Domantas Sabonis in their four-game series loss to the Miami Heat. Last season, injuries to centre Myles Turner, guard Malcolm Brogdon, forward TJ Warren and Sabonis significantly hindered the team’s ability to repeat its regular season success from the prior year and failed to make the playoffs after losing to the Washington Wizards in the play-in tournament.
For LeVert, it is just the latest in a line of roadblocks that have kept him sidelined over the past couple of seasons. He missed 25 games last season when a routine physical by the Pacers — after being traded by the Brooklyn Nets — discovered a small mass on his kidney. It was discovered early enough and doctors were able to remove it, and he returned to the floor for the remainder of the season. In 2019, he suffered a thumb injury that sidelined him for 23 games, and in 2018 he suffered a gruesome leg injury that forced him to miss 41 games.
When he is healthy, LeVert is a solid facilitator and perhaps the best shot creator on the Pacers outside of Warren. He hasn’t played more than 50 games since his second year in the league, but he averaged a career-high 20.2 points last season between the Pacers and the Nets. LeVert is not the most efficient shooter, especially from 3-point range as he is a career 33.6 percent shooter from beyond the arc, but he brings a different dynamic to Indiana’s offense.
