It depends what the result of the trade scenarios are. Do the Blazers have a contending roster after the trade?
that's just a phony standard in my view. It basically makes Ant untouchable because there's no single trade with Ant as the centerpiece that is going to elevate Portland into contention. It could very well be the trade after that does that; or the trade after that one; or hitting a home run on a draft pick
it would have to be a process, and the trade of Ant could be an integral part of a process that ends up with Portland contending; and that wouldn't get to that point if the outcome of a Simons trade wasn't part of the equation
Blazer fans are also traumatized by the defensive shortcomings of the DameCJ and DameAnt duos. It's flipped the other direction where many are underrating players offense. Yes those duo's have real problems and the team needs players that are better defensively. But there's 8 rotational players each game - DameAnt can be the top 2 offensively and the team can succeed .
Blazer fans are not traumatized about Dame/CJ. But they did spend 7 years hearing the same tired bullshit about the power of Dame/CJ you're trying to peddle about Dame/Ant. There's no market for that, at least not among people who paid attention to the 7 years Dame/CJ reboots that failed the same way every time
last off-season, I was all for giving the Dame/Ant duo a chance. My reasoning was that Simons is a different player than CJ and we couldn't really know what kind of mesh and synergy the two would develop. Well, I saw the mesh, the synergy...and no thanks; been there/done that; for the 8th time now. Ant isn't CJ; he's actually worse on defense. Out of the 24 players who suited up for Portland last season, Ant was 24th in defensive rating. Portland was a bad at defense last season yet somehow, Ant was 4 points worse than the team. And Ant was 22nd in DBPM, ahead of only Knox and Chance Comanche...yeah, that Chance Comanche...who I wouldn't mind being on the team just for the opportunity of saying Chance Comanche lots of times
but more than that, what is so special about Ant's offense? Out of the 149 qualified players Ant ranked 71st in 3ptFG%; 108th out of 190 in TS%. He ranked 108th out of 190 in PER as well, with a mark of 14.8 when the NBA average is 15.0. He ranked 182nd out of 245 in FT rate; he was 189th out of 190 in rebound rate; 70th out of 190 in assist rate. He ranked 164th out of 190 in winshares/48 at .054 when the NBA average .100.
as mentioned, he was tied for 187th out of 190 in DBPM. That was part of him being tied for 140th out of 190 with a -1.1 BPM. And your suggestion he was an offensive dynamo isn't backed up by him being tied for 63rd in OBPM with noted offensive juggernauts Emmanuel Quickley and Mason Plumlee and behind CJ, Dinwiddie, DDR, Christian Wood, D'Angelo Russell, Malcolm Brogdon, & Buddy Hield. None of those guys are indispensable because of their offense...why is Ant?
Ant is terrible at defense, and at best, he's overall average at offense. I get that he's still relatively young with some potential upside. But he is a 24 year old 5-year veteran with nearly 300 games of experience. The horizon of his upside is pretty visible.
What I see is an undersized SG with relatively poor PG skills. He's not 3&D because he's negative D. He doesn't have the size or length to switch onto typical NBA wings, and even if he did, there's that D issue. So he has poor versatility. He's a terrible rebounder who doesn't get to the FT line, and getting to the FT line is an integral part of individual NBA offense
making the requirement of a Simons trade that the trade has to make Portland a contender or no dice, makes no sense at all to me
