Brett Brown was lamenting that without Simmons the '6ers had no one to guard BOS dynamic young wings. Well, they drafted Mikal Bridges (#10) a fine wing defender, but flipped him to PHX for Zhaire and a 1st rounder (MIA's 2021 pick).
Bridges would be a fine matchup for Tatum.
Zhaire played 30 minutes ... this season.
And with the emergence of Shake Milton, unclear if there's a spot for Zhaire.
(besides Bridges, Shai and Porter Jr were also on board, though it's hard to imagine them intentionally drafting another injured Big after what they went through with Embiid and Simmons). Bridges or Shai would have helped a lot.
Looks like PHI outsmarted themselves again.
In B2B drafts:
Trading up for Fultz cost them Tatum and a 1st rounder; trading down cost them a very solid 2-way Bridges for a non-playing Zhaire and a 2021 1st.
To make matters worse, Mikal Bridges was a Villanova product and his mom worked for the '6ers. And still they botched it.
EDIT: Brett Brown traded Mikal Bridges to the Phoenix Suns for Zhaire Smith and Miami’s unprotected 2021 first-round draft pick when he was interim general manager. So Brown did it to himself.
To be fair to Brown, trading Bridges wasn’t the lone dark spot of his tenure behind the desk. He also traded away Richaun Holmes for cash, a pair of promising young wings (Justin Anderson and Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot) for Mike Muscala, and struck out spectacularly in free agency, but hey, at least he traded away the rights to Kostas Antetokounmpo for Shake Milton on draft night, that one kind of worked out.
I've long been a Rich Holmes fan. He just wants it more than most.