The Idea of Trading Ben or Joel Needs to Stop

For whatever reason, the national media has been on a non stop tirade since the Sixers playoff loss to the Celtics in 2018 that Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons are mortal enemies and can never play together. Sixers fans have had to deal with this nonsense argument and claim almost daily at this point. Nobody in Philadelphia is arguing that Joel and Ben are best friends or the perfect match on the court, but guys with much worse relationships have won together.

Joel’s recent interview where he said, “I love him [Ben Simmons] and I want to play with him for the rest of my career”, was a glimmer of hope for Sixers fans, that maybe the national sports media would stop with this ridiculous narrative. Nope, of course not, why would they all of a sudden decide to start giving smart intelligent takes? Waking up and scrolling through the timeline I saw way too many blue check marks suggesting breaking up Ben and Joel, after a close loss to a hot Portland team without Ben or Joel. Yup that totally makes sense. Jalen Rose was on Get Up yesterday and suggested trading Simmons and Emiid for draft picks like the Thunder did with Paul George. These guys can’t actually believe the bullshit they are spewing, right? I wasn’t that surprised by these moronic takes from the same people who have been pushing this narrative for years.

But then I saw a poll from WIP Morning Show that posed the question, What should the Sixers do with injury-prone stars Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid? At the time of writing this, 40.6% of voters said keep them, thankfully there’s a majority of smart basketball people in the city. But 25% said trade both of them and 26.7% said trade Simmons. I really expected more from Sixers fans to not fall into the trap the national media has set out. So, 25% of you want to trade two generational talents because they haven’t been able to win in their first three seasons? Did we not learn anything from watching The Last Dance? Jordan didn’t win a title until his 7th season. Once the Bulls figured it out they went on to become the NBA’s greatest dynasty. Could you imagine if Jerry Kruase decided to trade Michael Jordan after his third season in the league? I know the majority of Sixers fans don’t feel this way, but the fact that there are people out there that believe trading Joel and Ben is smart is absolutely insane to me. Joel Embiid is 26 years old and is the most dominant big man in the league, yes more so than Nikola Jokic.

Ben Simmons is 24 and has some of the skill set of a young Lebron James. He is one of three players to have averaged 16.4 points, 8.3 rebounds and eight assists per game at 24 years old or younger. He’s also one of three guys to put up this statline for his career, with the other two being Magic Johnson and Oscar Robertson. Ben is on pace to become a Hall of Famer with these numbers and if Joel stays healthy long enough there’s no reason to believe he won’t be joining him. With Joel and Ben the Sixers went 103-61 from 2017-2019, the best two year stretch since 1999-2001. I can’t even begin to understand what goes on inside the minds of people who say “the process” was a failure. I don’t think enough people realize how difficult drafting is.

Looking back on the 2014 draft, when Joel was selected, through the 2017 draft and looking at the top five picks, the success rate is about 50%. The stud guys include Embiid, Towns, Kristaps, Simmons, Tatum, De’Aaron Fox. While the busts list has Jabari Parker, Dante Exum, Jahill Okafor, Dragen Bender, Mario Hezonja, Fultz and then there’s a bunch of guys in the middle. The NBA draft is no sure thing and the Sixers got two generational talents out of it.

The knock on Ben and Joel is they haven’t been able to win in the playoffs yet. Ah yes, let’s break up these two because in 2018, when Sixers fans would have been happy with just sneaking into the playoffs the team exceeded all expectations and finished 3rd in the East. They won 52 games which was the most since 2001. After dominating the Heat in their first playoff series together they lost to a much better coached Celtics team.

Then in 2019, they took the eventual champions to seven games and well we all know how that ended. The two most successful seasons in the past twenty years of the franchise and people want to trade one of the two stars? There’s been a ton of disappointment this season obviously, but that’s more due to the roster construction rather than Joel and Ben. We know the Sixers roster is flawed at this point. Al Horford’s contract gives us all nightmares, but trading Joel or Ben doesn’t fix that. There’s so many things that should be done before even considering trading either of the two.

I’ll say it again, Michael Jordan didn’t win his first ring until his 7th season. Lebron James didn’t win his first title until his 9th season. It took the two best players the game has ever seen a combined 16 seasons before they won their first championship. Ben and Joel have been playing together for three seasons, please give them time. The Sixers have arguably the most talented duo in franchise history right now and there’s people that want to ruin it. We are in the best era of Sixers basketball in the past twenty years.

If you honestly believe trading Ben or Joel right now is a smart move I really don’t know how to help you. Go join the Carson Wentz haters because I’m sure you’re in that group as well. But this idea that one of these two special players needs to be traded has to stop.