Jonathon Simmons is no longer a young, exciting developmental project for the San Antonio Spurs. With his trade to the Orlando Magic, he arrived a finished product, a guy who will still get better but not by leaps and bounds, not by the amount he did just by going to a team that will give him free reign.
Accordingly, no one cares anymore when he has a good game. That’s what happens to “potential” players who get good, but not very good. They just kind of settle into a life of NBA role-playerdom, contributing in their way to wins but not blowing the pants off of anybody. Evan Fournier and Nikola Vucevic are other examples of this trend on the Magic. Now that I think of it, this may actually be an Orlando-specific problem. It’s where hype goes to die.
Simmons had 29 points tonight, setting a career-high, and the Magic lost what feels like their 50th game in a row. Part of the problem was that the refs simply didn’t want to give Simmons any free-throws at all, despite him throwing his body around, drawing contact all over the place. In fact, the refs cruelly took away a 30-burger from us, calling a late bucket by him an offensive foul. Another problem was that Ersan Ilyasova went nuts, but that wasn’t Simmons’ fault at all.