Hollinger: Ben Simmons trade seems inevitable after The Pass. But how can Sixers pull it off?

Look, winning a championship is hard.

Even if you seemingly have everything lined up perfectly, there are so many random ways it can go wrong. Joel Embiid can tear his meniscus. Danny Green can strain his calf. George Hill can start showing his age. The coach can keep playing Dwight Howard, “foul out” Seth Curry in the third quarter and burn his last timeout for no reason with 40 seconds left. You can outscore a team by 20 points over seven games, blow multiple gigantic leads and somehow lose a series you should have won 6-1. You can even get Rickrolled.

That said, the event that will burn in the memories of Sixers fans, not to mention actual Sixers, wasn’t any of those things. Instead, the signature moment came with 3:49 left in a close Game 7 between Atlanta and Philadelphia, a play that will become known simply in local lore as The Pass.

After Ben Simmons executed a beautiful spin move on the block against the Hawks’ Danilo Gallinari and found himself mano-a-mano against the rim, he eschewed the easy dunk spread before him and instead dropped the ball off to a cutting Matisse Thybulle, who was fouled by a recovering John Collins and made only one of the two free throws.

No, that one point wasn’t the difference between winning and losing. But The Pass took the air out of the building and underscored the issues at the core of the Simmons experience in Philadelphia. He has no confidence at all in his shooting, and Nate McMillan’s strategy of intentionally fouling him picked away at that further. The Sixers ended up taking him off the floor in fourth quarters when they were in the bonus.

Worse yet was the impact it had on Simmons’ offensive aggression. He doesn’t want to get fouled, so he doesn’t want to shoot either, even at the rim … or handle the ball, which is quite a statement for the team’s alleged point guard. Amazingly, Simmons didn’t take a shot in the fourth quarter of the final four games of the series.

That’s the thing: The Pass wasn’t an aberration; it was a culmination.

Go back and watch Game 6, for instance. In the final four minutes, Simmons shrunk away to a spot on the floor where nobody would pass it to him. It wasn’t the “dunker spot,” a spot along the baseline around eight feet from the basket on either side where teams often stash athletic non-shooters. No, it was …

… here. The puker spot. The shadowy, valueless place between the elbow and the low post, a spot where no team has intentionally stationed an offensive player since around 1996. Not screening anybody, not moving anywhere, just kind of floating around hoping not to be noticed.

The Pass, however, also underscored another reality for Philadelphia: Even if Simmons regains enough confidence to attempt uncontested field goals at the rim, there is the little matter that the Sixers’ two best players don’t fit.

The Sixers have been pushing against this reality almost since the dawn of The Process, but this result drives it home. Even a more aggressive version of Simmons still can’t shoot, and that player has an awfully hard time finding a home in a half-court offense designed to feature Embiid.

Simmons’ shooting woes actually hurt the Sixers’ defense just as much in a roundabout way. The reason Kevin Huerter was able to annihilate Curry on isos in Game 7 was because the Sixers had no place else to put Curry. The reason for that was because Atlanta was playing the 6-foot-10 Gallinari at small forward. He’s the walking definition of toast against most perimeter matchups, but not in this one … because he could take Simmons and hang out in the paint, comfortable in the knowledge that his assignment would never shoot. It took the Hawks a few games to get to this arrangement consistently, but by the end of the series, they were able to play their best offensive lineup rent-free.

As long as Simmons remains a non-threat from the perimeter, this situation will never get better. Embiid is a dominant post-up player who is maximized with four shooters around him. Simmons is an end-to-end slasher who also is maximized with an open floor and multiple shooting threats. Each is better off without the other.

And if the Sixers are only going to keep one, I don’t think it’s a big question of whom to pick. Embiid was arguably the best player in the league this season in the minutes he was able to take the court. Simmons was … pretty good, but not Embiid.

So it’s easy. Just trade Simmons, right?

Not so fast. This is where front office realities collide with fans’ hopes and dreams. Trading Simmons requires A) another team that wants him, even after what happened on Sunday night, and B) that team to have something Philly needs in return.

That something Philly needs is a perimeter player who can make plays on the ball but also offers a shooting threat to surround Embiid’s post-ups. Basically, a better version of Curry. (Curry might be the best spot-up shooter in the league outside his own family, but asking him to be your primary on-ball threat is a major reach.)

The other issue is that Simmons is just concluding the first year of a max contract extension that pays him $147 million over the next four years. Trading a player on a salary this big, right as his value just cratered, is not a simple endeavor. He’s a 24-year-old All-Star, yes, but he doesn’t fit every roster.

Making it harder is the fact that the Sixers presumably want to bring back a star for Simmons and not just a collection of unwanted contracts. Stars are pretty rarely available in trades as it is, but Philly needs it to be a particular type of star, one who plays the perimeter and can shoot.

The two names that immediately come to mind for every Philadelphia fan, of course, are Bradley Beal and Damian Lillard. Maybe they’ll become available someday, but today isn’t that day. Forget about whether the Sixers have enough draft assets or whatever to get a deal to the finish line; there is no interest in the transaction from the other side yet, which is a big issue for a Sixers team racing against time. They can’t assume Embiid will be healthy forever, and in any case, it seems almost inconceivable that Simmons could still be on the team when training camp opens.

However, moving down the food chain too far takes the Sixers into trades that seem distasteful. CJ McCollum makes $100 million over the next three years, so the contracts match, but he’s not a point guard, he’s overpaid for what he is now and he turns 30 in September. D’Angelo Russell has two years and $61 million left and fits the bill positionally, but his play the past two seasons has been underwhelming, to say the least. Meanwhile, a sign-and-trade for Kyle Lowry or Mike Conley would also likely cost them Green because of the Sixers’ luxury tax position and would represent a young-for-old swap that leaves their future beyond next season in some peril. Kemba Walker would have been a great idea three years ago. Andrew Wiggins? Check, please.

This takes us to one final option, the one that maybe doesn’t seem like the most appetizing at first, but the one that ultimately might be Philly’s best chance of salvaging this era.

Zach LaVine.

The Bulls guard is a year and change older than Simmons and entering the final year of a contract that will pay him $19.5 million. Chicago is in a tough spot with a potential extension on him, either needing to cut back on offseason moves to do a renegotiation-and-extend or let him play out his walk year and hope it can re-sign him at or near the max.

Trading LaVine for Simmons, however (with Al-Farouq Aminu thrown in to even salaries), accomplishes quite a bit for both teams. The Sixers get a knockdown off-the-dribble shooter for the end of the shot clock, and while LaVine isn’t quite the playmaker that some of the other guards I’ve mentioned are, he’s quietly improved in this area. On a Bulls offense devoid of threats, he still managed to be a potent offensive weapon this past season and made his first All-Star team. No, LaVine is not a Defensive Player of the Year candidate, but replacing Simmons with him makes it easier for the Sixers to play their Greens and Thybulles.

And from Chicago’s perspective, Simmons can be the guy he never could be in Philly. The Bulls’ center, Nikola Vucevic, is a deadly shooter comfortable operating from the elbows, which gives Simmons plenty of room to roam closer to the rim … whether from the dunker spot, posting up guards or slashing off the dribble. The Bulls could use him as a screener and let him roll to the rim, a pathway never explored enough in Philly (it’s criminal the Sixers didn’t use him as a backup five when Embiid was off the floor), especially once Chicago brings in more shooting. Fortunately, the Bulls still have the cap flexibility to do this.

Meanwhile, LaVine for Simmons also helps reset the clock in Chicago. Simmons is signed for four more years and is 24 years old, so it buys the Bulls a bit more time to get everything right with what remains a pretty flawed roster. That’s probably a better idea than going all-in on this season just to keep LaVine happy and still quite possibly failing at it.

For as long as Vooch is the other star in the Windy City, Simmons also gives the Bulls an elite defender to pair next to him. That’s the thing: Simmons can help the right team a lot more than he helps the Sixers. Even after The Pass, for instance, Simmons picked Trae Young’s dribble twice in less than a minute. (Side note: It’s amazing Philadelphia didn’t take more advantage of him and Thybulle by pressing and trapping in non-desperation situations after it nearly stole them Game 1.)

So, LaVine for Simmons it is…

Or not.

The thing about trades is that they’re easy to drum up on your own but much harder to execute when two teams need to come to an agreement on value. There could be all kinds of reasons the Bulls don’t want to make a deal with Philly or the Sixers wouldn’t want to do a deal Chicago would find acceptable. The reality is that for every 100 trade calls we made in Memphis, maybe one or two of them yielded a transaction.

But in the wake of The Pass, one important dynamic of any Philly trade conversation has changed. Previously, a Simmons deal was something the Sixers could do. Now, it is something they must do.

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(Photo: Matt Slocum / Associated Press)

Hollinger: Ben Simmons trade seems inevitable after The Pass. But how can Sixers pull it off?

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