Daryl Morey addresses Ben Simmons situation, Sixers deadline plans

I think action comes from dialogue and that meeting was really about getting the dialogue to a better place and that’s continued. My conversations with Ben Simmons, Rich Paul, his agents, Elton (Brand) our conversations, you know, I’m not going to get into specifics, but there’s been more conversations with Ben directly said been more conversations, I can tell you for sure that those conversations have not progressed. As anyone knows who’s dealing with a difficult situation like we are, you don’t make progress without first having a foundation of dialogue and that’s where we’ve gotten to and we need to continue that and hopefully those get somewhere. We shall see.

The one thing we’re in agreement on is we would like a win-win trade. A trade that helps the 76ers, it’s most likely going to help Ben in his mind and what his goals are and we’d like to accomplish that by by the February 10 deadline. If we don’t, then I think this foundation that we’ve established, we’ll see if that can help us work through things if there isn’t a trade. Trades are hard to do. It takes two, right? That’s again why I feel the fans frustration like just get a deal done. Well it takes two sides, right? In this case, it’s probably going to take three sides, it’s probably going to take multiple teams, and whenever you’re involving a big trade with multiple teams, the odds of those deals happening are just low and so I think I feel the fans frustration. They went through so much pain to get Joel Embiid, a great player, to get Tobias Harris, to get Ben Simmons to get this foundation that gave us a real chance last year, which we sort of blew and we should’ve gotten to the conference finals if not farther. I feel that frustration. I know it. They went through so much to get these players together and to have one of them say I’d rather be somewhere else, that sucks. That sucks for everybody, but it’s important that we deal with the reality and like try and maximize from here.

I can tell you that for sure, there are deals with the Sacramento Kings that I think would work. Will those deals ever happen? I have no idea. Are there just trade deals with the Kings? Probably not. Is it multiple teams? Probably, but for sure there are deals that are possible that would go over our line. I do think with how great Joel is, our line has moved down a little bit because Joel has lifted us into contention by his sheer will of greatness this year, that does push the number of deals that we would do more likely, if that makes any sense. It’s more likely than we can find ones that get us into that top few contention because of our great Joel is playing. So we are sitting right now on a better chance of a trade that actually helps Joel and the Sixers and Tobias and our whole team. There’s a better chance that happens because of how great Joel has been.