He seems to have overplayed his hand and his statements now come across like he is on some power trip. If he was serious about winning he would have moved Ben a long time ago. He is just being disgusting now and tanking his value on purpose.
Come off it man.
Ben is the one tanking his value by being an insolent snot. He's not the only player that's been put up on the trading block. But he signed a contract. In exchange for all that money, in spite of his hurt feelings, he's obligated to perform in training and on the court, and improve his skill-set, for his current team. At the very least, play your heart out, improve your game, and raise your value, so you increase the population of teams that would be willing to take a chance on you and leave all parties satisfied. It says a lot that no player in the league has gone on record fully endorsing Simmons.
Morey can be stats-obsessed at times but despite his heavy-handed approach, he is absolutely right to insist on waiting this out, for two reasons:
1. Right now, no other team in the NBA is trading a quality difference player for Simmons. This may change as teams look to tank/reset, but at the moment all Philly would get for Simmons is scraps. Barring finding a diamond in the rough, letting Simmons go for pennies on the dollar caps what they can do in the next 4 years, and wastes Embiid's prime. They are within their rights to either hope a valuable asset comes back to his senses and lifts them to contender status, or they can trade him for someone who can.
2. Letting Simmons go for whatever because he's being unprofessional, sets a
terrible precedent for players across the league. It's no secret that numerous front offices (off the record of course) are supporting Morey's approach. Imagine if Simmons gets his way. Now you'll have players believing they can sulk a year into a hefty 5 year contract, and get a desired move they want, leaving their former team up shits creek. It destroys the notion of a contract being a two-way understanding between team and player, and as a result owners will seek to put in clauses that protect their interests.
As a corollary to reason 2, I cannot imagine a scenario where this feckery is not brought up in the next CBA negotiations. If I'm an owner I'm not signing a new agreement with players without insisting some sort of protection against players who try to pull dumb stunts like this.
Now, part of me thinks this is overdue karma for The Process. And if the Sixers hadn't indulged his refusal to shoot, and didn't offer him a huge contract, we wouldn't be here. So enough blame to go around.