In the first half of today’s episode of The Gastroenteritis Blues, Steve and Dan were joined by Bleacher Report’s Jake Fischer. The impetus behind Jake’s appearance was to expand upon the Sixers-specific angle of his report from Saturday, wherein he wrote that Washington Wizards star guard Bradley Beal was considering requesting a trade out of Washington prior to Thursday’s NBA Draft.

In his appearance, Jake sheds a great deal of light on Beal’s situation in Washington and how a Ben Simmons-led offer from Philadelphia could appeal to the Wizards’ brass. At the end of the interview, as Jake alluded to some reporting on Simmons that he would publish on Sunday afternoon, he shared an exclusive and rather damning nugget about the icy current relationship between the Sixers and their embattled star.

I’m not gonna write this in the story, but I’ll tell this to you guys and you guys can do what you want with it. They haven’t been able to really even get in touch with Ben since the season ended. Like, there was an intent to have a workout plan or whatever — like in any offseason. That’s always kind of been the case, that the Sixers haven’t been able to align with a development plan [for Ben] — that’s kind of what Yaron Weitzman wrote at Fox Sports in that big story. It just doesn’t sound like there’s ever been movement to come together on the same page to do that, and it hasn’t really worked this summer either. I think that’s not something that’s an encouraging sign for him being in Philadelphia in the future.

Why would Washington even want him if he's showing zero interest in getting better, and we wouldn't need him because we're rebuilding if we trade Beal.

Apparently because Simmons is 1st team All NBA according to DM lol

Simmons tanking his value to avoid a trade to the Wizards, smart man.

thoughts on these site changes?

a bit much...

You realize Simmons is only 24, right?

You can literally rebuild with him, i would imagine that would be the goal for Washington. A change of scenery and a team that is better built around him without a center that sits in the post and relies on scoring down low as much as Embiid does.

He looks like he gave up and let it get to him mentally in the second round, but people seem to forget how damn good he can be and is most of the time. Sixers would have NEVER been as good as they were last season without him, we all saw how mediocre they looked in the 14 games he was out (.500 record).

This post was edited by Sixers on Jul 27 2021 08:02am

You're not wrong

I mean this would make sense if Simmons wasn't a very efficient scorer.

He doesn't shoot bricks, he just doesn't shoot at all lol.

Teams who are rebuilding tend to slash salary and field a shit roster to tank for picks, so paying top-dollar to a future first-ballot HoF point guard in his prime doesn't really fit the equation.

If we trade Beal and WB, then pretty much the only decent player we have left is Rui (maybe Deni if he develops). We're much closer to rebuilding than competing, so we'd just be paying to ride the treadmill, which doesn't make sense to me.

As an aside, I'd like to see Deni take on more of a role as a ball handler. Brooks had him as a spot up shooter, which was the worst way to use him. I'm eager to see how Unseld Jr uses him.

This post was edited by Terps on Jul 27 2021 09:52am