MAILBAG: How Much Better Can Anfernee Simons Get?
Plus, questions about recent reporting on Deandre Ayton, letting Nickeil Alexander-Walker get away and the Trail Blazers' plans for the upcoming draft.
I did not go to All-Star Weekend this year.
There were a few reasons for it. Last year, Damian Lillard was in both the All-Star Game and the three-point contest, and Salt Lake City is an easy two-hour flight from Portland. It made sense to go, and I was glad I did. This year, all I had as someone who covers the Portland Trail Blazers was Scoot Henderson and Shaedon Sharpe in the Rising Stars game—and of those two, only Henderson was actually participating since Sharpe is recovering from surgery. I’m not flying to Indianapolis (where there are no direct flights from Portland) in February for that. If Sharpe was a) healthy, and b) doing the dunk contest, maybe that would have been a different story.
But I have a limited amount of funds for these sorts of trips, and in the immediate future, I have to use that money for two events that are much more important to the goal of giving you the best coverage of this team that you’ll find anywhere: the lottery and predraft combine in Chicago in May, and Summer League in Las Vegas in July.
I spent the weekend mostly unplugging. I only watched one of the three nights’ events—Saturday—but I saw all of the discourse about how broken All-Star Weekend is, and my overarching thought is: for as visibly annoyed as Adam Silver was in presenting the trophy to the Eastern Conference team that scored over 200 points, this is exactly what he wanted.
I still love the NBA and follow it religiously, but I’ve long been annoyed that Silver’s regime seems to view itself as more of a tech company than a sports league. I don’t even want to think about how much money the league spent on the LED court that was used for the Saturday night festivities, but that was something it felt like they did solely to generate social-media buzz about the court lighting up neon green during the three-point contest presented by rebranded Sierra Mist.
Silver and Victor Wembanyama excitedly showed off a demo of a new A.I. technology that allows you to ask your Alexa to show you the NBA game you’re watching animated like Spider-Man. Who is that for? Who was asking for it? What problem is that solving? How much money went into that, that could have gone to something more productive?
I’ve been to All-Star Weekend several times and still enjoy it for what it is: an industry convention and social-media event that you go to to be seen at. It’s above my pay grade to figure out how to make players care about the exhibition game more. I wish more stars would do the dunk contest, and it wouldn’t be a bad thing if the game was better, but to me, it’s very low down on the list of long-term issues the league needs to address.
Silver has spent the last decade wanting the NBA to be the Instagram league, and an All-Star game that everybody hates where nobody tries, where the star of the weekend is a court that lights up different colors, is the end result of that. Worry about keeping the main thing the main thing (in this case, the games, which are still quite good for the most part) and the rest of the NBA’s problems will solve themselves.
Anyway, I also spent the break diving into your mailbag questions, which spanned a variety of topics. What is Anfernee Simons’ ceiling? How much weight should you put into a recent report about Deandre Ayton’s early Blazers tenure? Why didn’t they keep Nickeil Alexander-Walker at the 2022 trade deadline? Are they really going to use four draft picks this year? Find out below.
How much more growth do you think there is for Anfernee Simons? Do you think he is a building block, future all-star, or do you see him in the Tyler Herro vein (who is actually younger than him).
If it's the latter when do you think realistically the team starts looking to move him? I also have to imagine they will want to see Shaedon back first to make sure he is a guy before making that decision.
- Burricane