>Very strange to see grown men so invested in defending
>this guy.

It's a bad decision for him. It's not going to work out the way he wants, and it's dumb with 4 years left on a deal to think your owner will just come off you for peanuts when you haven't earned your way into roster consideration for an immediate title contender. It's also going to bring up all sorts of questions from future teams about whether they can get the most out of him, whether he's got the yips, whether he really wants to put in the work, etc. It's a bad, bad decision for him to be doing this imo.

But yes, some of us are defending Simmons's future value. Especially his future value with a lengthy contract already signed. And yes, I think it's totally reasonable to defend the value of Simmons as a prospect who just turned 25 and has a lot of tools in his kit. Playoff teams aren't likely to be interested, which is certainly fair, but he's got obvious things that raise a non-playoff team's floor imo. If you disagree, that's totally reasonable. As mentioned above, the character questions and confidence questions certainly make it debatable that the value of the skills he has will be worth it for a trade partner.

I also don't think it's "so invested" if guys choose blow off some steam by logging onto a message board to debate a unique prospect and unique situation, lol. But whatever.