Daryl Morey’s season-ending press conference was fine. He didn’t give away too much, nor would we expect him too. He’s not going to sit up there and say, “yes, I can confirm we will attempt to trade Ben Simmons in the offseason.” He won’t do that now and he won’t do it ever.

What happens is that reporters find themselves in situations where they need decide if it’s worth asking a question that they know is not going to be answered. If you don’t ask, you are a due diligence failure. The canvassing is incomplete. But if you do ask, and get nothing, then isn’t it ultimately a waste? Therein lies the conundrum.

Howard Eskin has made a living on the latter thought, that hard questions must be asked even if you get jack shit in return. And so today, after Keith Pompey broached the Ben Simmons trade topic, The King tried again to get something out of Morey towards the tail-end of the media availability, which resulted in a three-query sequence:

There’s not much to that outside of a few good laughs, and what typically happens is this:

  1. Howard doesn’t get much of a response.
  2. The subject in question takes a dig at him.
  3. A portion of Philly sports fans say “at least Howard has the balls to ask the question,” or something along those lines.

Anthony Gargano was not impressed, however. The Cuz reacted on his radio show by calling out what he described as “grandstanding” –


I gotta agree with The Cuz here. We’re not gonna get that answer out of Morey two days after they are knocked out of the playoffs. Plus, he’d be stupid to tell us anything anyway. What’s he gonna do, show his hand? Kill Simmons’ trade value? The best we can hope for is that he somehow slips up and/or gives us some kind of body language ‘tell’ that allows us to read between the lines.

It’s important to ask hard questions and keep people honest, and Howard has made a name for himself doing just that for 30+ years, but you also have to ask yourself if the juice is always worth the squeeze. If you know going into a question that it just will not be answered, then does it need to be asked?

A question for the philosophers.