With the NBA season under a month away, Ben Simmons’ future is no closer to being sorted and the Australian may have a leading superstar of the league to thank for that.
According to ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, the Brooklyn Nets would have traded for the Philadelphia 76ers star had Kevin Durant not kiboshed the planned move.
Smith said the Nets were set to make a deal with the Sixers that would have sent All-Star guard Kyrie Irving to Philadelphia in exchange for Simmons. However, fellow superstar Durant made sure that didn’t happen.
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“Kyrie could have ended up in Philly,” Smith said on First Take. “(Nets GM) Sean Marks couldn’t do that because KD wasn’t having it. KD wasn’t having it.
“KD like ‘Kyrie ain’t going no damn place!’ Let me tell you something right now, Philadelphia might’ve said no, but I assure you, I assure you, if it were not for Kevin Durant, the Brooklyn Nets would be interested in making that deal.”
Seven-time All-Star Irving would give the 76ers a genuine championship calibre guard to pair with Joel Embiid.
Irving would retire if he were traded, according to Nick Wright of Fox Sports in the US.
Simmons’ trade demand isn’t just causing fractures at the Sixers and potentially the Nets.
Minnesota had also been linked with a play for the Aussie – and news of the sacking of Timberwolves’ president of basketball operations Gersson Rosas, less than two weeks before their first preseason game of the season has NBA insiders asking questions.
Owner Glen Taylor announced that the Timberwolves “parted ways” with Rosas in a two-sentence statement that revealed no direct explanation for the dismissal after just two seasons.
Star centre Karl-Anthony Towns appeared to be caught off guard by the decision, tweeting out a three-letter acronym “wtf” for a profane expression of confusion.
Executive vice president Sachin Gupta was temporarily elevated to guide the basketball operations, Taylor confirmed in a separate announcement
According to reports in the US, Rosas wasn’t keen on parting with a big-name player to the Sixers to secure the 25-year-old’s services. It’s also been reported that Rosas may have wanted to trade away too much.
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Ian Kenyon of Bleacher Report wrote: “I could be wrong but the timing of the Rosas firing feels like a disconnect on the Simmons negotiation between owner and GM.
“There’s no reason to let Rosas run the entire off-season to fire him right before pre-season games start UNLESS it’s due to Rosas not wanting to give up X, Y, Z for Simmons and Taylor basically going rogue on acquiring Simmons. That’s kind of how that looks to me.”
SB Nation’s Brady Klopfer tweeted: “I’m not sure what would be more Timberwolves, if after ousting Rosas they promptly trade way too much for Ben Simmons, or if they do literally nothing.”
NBA journalist Evan Dammarell added: “With Rosas now out, I feel like the Timberwolves are going to accelerate towards getting Ben Simmons.”
The headliner deal that Rosas orchestrated in February 2020 was to fetch guard D’Angelo Russell, a close friend and on-court complement to Towns. Russell and Towns missed long stretches of last season as the Timberwolves finished 23-49. The best development was the play of rookie Anthony Edwards, the electric guard taken with the No.1 pick last November.
Gupta was hired by Rosas after stints in the front office with the Detroit Pistons, Philadelphia 76ers and Houston Rockets. With degrees from MIT and Stanford, Gupta is an analytics ace who began his career at ESPN, where he developed the popular website feature known as the ” NBA Trade Machine ” that calculates the salary cap ramifications of any potential deal that a fan wants to plug in.
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