NBA Trades: Analyzing a hypothetical Ben Simmons/Damian Lillard trade

Ben Simmons is the most recent must-trade NBA star in a long lineage of them. After an abominable performance from Simmons in the second round of the NBA playoffs against the Atlanta Hawks, Philadelphia 76ers co-star Joel Embiid and head coach Doc Rivers expressed their shaken confidence in him.

That was likely the final nail in the coffin for both player and organization, and the Sixers have been looking to trade him ever since. However, their demands are steep. They want a plethora of draft picks as well as young players with upside. For a player in Simmons who shriveled into a tiny ball and disappeared against the Hawks, can any team justify making such an investment?

Ben Simmons is the NBA’s newest must-trade star, and the Philadelphia 76ers want to use him to trade for Damian Lillard. Here’s how it could work.

Enter the Portland Trail Blazers and Damian Lillard. The Blazers are an organization with their own chaos and drama, and Lillard isn’t exactly… disgruntled, but he’s not happy either. Portland did nothing to enhance their championship candidacy other than blaming previous head coach Terry Stotts and firing him, and then replacing him with Chauncey Billups. And that’s been its own disastrous scenario.

So Lillard knows the clock is ticking on his own reign of greatness, and the Blazers are probably not going to be able to build anything close to a championship contender around him. As a result, the relationship between player and organization is certain to deteriorate over time, and a trade is likely the inevitable outcome.

Let’s jump to the end and assume that the Sixers and Blazers find common ground and decide to work on a deal to solve both of their problems. Our friends at Bleacher Report came up with a hypothetical trade idea that gets both teams what they’re looking for, so we’re going to break this trade down from both sides and see if it works for all parties.

First, here’s what the trade looks like. (Note, the original trade idea proposed the Sixers sending their 2022 and 2024 first-round picks, but the Sixers cannot send the 2022 first-rounder. Thus, I adjusted it to the 2023 and 2026 NBA drafts, the earliest they could send two picks out.)

Let’s take a look at this trade in greater detail, starting with the Portland Trail Blazers.