Mavs & Ben Simmons Trade Rumors: Have Sixers Had Enough?

The Philadelphia 76ers have had ongoing drama with Ben Simmons and his NBA trade demands for the better part of a year now. When is enough finally going to be enough? And can the Dallas Mavericks get involved?

Dalton Trigg | Feb 1, 2022

If the Philadelphia 76ers and Ben Simmons were a married couple, they’d be seven months into being ‘legally separated’ right now. A finalized divorce seems inevitable, but there is still no timetable for when that might actually happen.

Simmons, who still has three seasons remaining on his contract past this season worth $108 million, has definitely played a big part in this NBA drama story by not reporting to the team and refusing to let his teammates talk to him throughout this process, but general manager Daryl Morey and the 76ers aren’t free of blame either. At what point will enough be enough, though?

We've written about the rumors stating that Dallas Mavericks superstar Luka Doncic would like to alongside Simmons, and that Simmons apparently has Dallas on his shortlist of preferred destinations when he is eventually traded. We’ve also expressed how a trade of Simmons to Dallas might be in the ‘pipe-dream’ category given Philadelphia’s absurd asking price for Simmons. Even before Simmons left the team and raised some red flags, the asking price for him was already steep considering his offensive limitations.

At some point, Morey is going to have to cut his losses, at least to a certain extent, and move on from Simmons. But that 'point' might not be before this season's February 10 trade deadline. Even if the Mavs can't eventually get involved in the Ben Simmons sweepstakes, a resolution to that particular conflict could help Dallas in other ways, as overall trade activity this year has been stalled due to waiting on that first big domino to fall.

Will the Simmons saga with the 76ers drag on another handful of months into the offseason, or will Morey finally realize that he's fighting a battle he can't win and do what needs to be done? We only have a little over one week to find out, and perhaps the Dallas and Philadelphia front offices can talk about things further when the 76ers meet the Mavs at American Airlines Center on February 4.

Published Feb 1, 2022

DALTON TRIGG

Dalton Trigg is the Editor-In-Chief for Dallas Basketball, as well as the Executive Editor overseeing Inside The Rockets, Inside The Spurs, All Knicks, and The Magic Insider. He is the founder and host for the Mavs Step Back Podcast, which is a proud part of the Blue Wire podcast network. Trigg graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi’s College of Business and Economic Development with a bachelor’s degree in entrepreneurship in 2016. After spending a few years with multiple Dallas Mavericks-related blogs, including SB Nation’s Mavs Moneyball, Trigg joined DallasBasketball.com as a staff writer in 2018 and never looked back. At the start of 2022, he was promoted to the EIC title he holds now. Through the years, Trigg has conducted a handful of high-profile one-on-one interviews to add to his resume — in both writing and podcasting. Some of his biggest interviews have been with Mavs owner Mark Cuban, Mavs GM Nico Harrison, now-retired legend Dirk Nowitzki and many other current/former players and team staffers. Many of those interviews and other articles by Trigg have been aggregated by other well-known sports media websites, such as Yahoo Sports, CBS Sports, Bleacher Report and others. You can find Trigg on all major social media channels, but his most prevalent platform is on Twitter. Whether it’s posting links to his DBcom work, live-tweeting Mavs games or merely giving his opinions on things going on with Dallas and the rest of the NBA, the daily content never stops rolling. For any inquiries, please email Dalton@MavsStepBack.com.