Day: April 5, 2023

The NBA and NBPA did not hold any serious discussions about creating a provision where players on a supermax contract who request a trade lose the extra five percent of the cap. Zach Lowe called the concept the Ben Simmons rule, referring to his trade request from the Philadelphia 76ers while on the Rose rule rookie max.

“I didn’t even really hear a peep about it,” said Lowe.

“No and I dug in on that,” said Bobby Marks. Because I had been asked by a couple teams about that. If there were 200 items talked about, that wasn’t [one of them].”

Players who sign a supermax contract are already ineligible to be traded for the first year after signing it.

For a rule such as the one discussed by Lowe and Marks to be enforced, it would have to be proven that a player even requested a trade and that would likely mean these situations would go to arbitration.

Joel Embiid may have sewn up the MVP award in a dominating performance, as he led the Philadelphia 76ers to victory over the Boston Celtics. Embiid scored 52 points on 20-of-25 shooting, grabbed 13 rebounds, dished out six assists and blocked two shots in the Sixers 103-101 victory.

In the eyes of his coach, that should have been enough for Embiid to wrap up the MVP award.

“There were so many things that we did wrong. But what we did right was Joel Embiid. The MVP race is over. Tonight, we couldn’t make shots. The man just scored half our points in an NBA game,” Doc Rivers said. “And I’m biased but the MVP race is over.”

Embiid was leading the tightly contested three-way MVP race as of the latest, and final, straw poll conducted by ESPN. The Sixers center led Nikola Jokic and Giannis Antetokounmpo atop tentative awards ballots, which don’t need to be finalized until the completion of the regular season.

The Washington Wizards were recently eliminated from playoff contention and will finish under .500 on the season. However, the team has seen enough progress that they plan to keep Wes Unseld Jr. as their head coach.

“He is our coach moving forward,” Wizards president and general manager Tommy Sheppard said Tuesday.

The Wizards have gone 69-92 thus far under Unseld. However, both campaigns have seen injuries to key players sink those seasons.