Brooklyn Nets: Does Dennis Schroder Hold More Value than Ben Simmons?

In the summer of 2019, Philadelphia didn't want Ben Simmons to go anywhere.

To set the record straight, Brooklyn Nets point guard Dennis Schroder is the established point guard for this franchise moving forward.

When exploring the NBA trade market with Kyrie Irving in 2021 and 2022, the Nets were highly critiqued by the media and opposing franchises not for Irving's talent, but for his reliability. The way the former Nets point guard handled things off the court made the organization lose trust in him. Fast forward to today, Ben Simmons is now the player that the Nets may find more difficulty within the trade market compared to when he was a Philadelphia 76er.

This is not familiar territory for Simmons, who was drafted first in the 2016 NBA Draft. The trajectory of his production started going downhill after his playoff series with the Atlanta Hawks in the 2021 Eastern Conference Semifinals. After getting traded to the Nets in the following season, Brooklyn has been trying to restore Simmons' All-Star form with him but has fallen short in their attempts because of injuries.

Don't look now, but in the games Simmons has played for the Nets, it's as if the game has caught up to him. No, Simmons has not become a worse playmaker and no Simmons has not become a worse rebounder or defender. Simmons is just simply not the scoring threat he once was as a Sixer. It also seems that he was more motivated playing for Philadelphia as a scorer, a franchise he notched a career-high of 42 points on February 21, 2021. For Brooklyn, only 22 points on November 20 two years ago.

As for his teammate, Schroder, he has reached the top flight of his basketball career in terms of overall success. After losing to the Phoenix Suns in the first round of the playoffs in 2021 on the Los Angeles Lakers, the Nets guard turned down a four-year $84 million extension to go to the Boston Celtics for less. In a drastic change of events, the Celtics traded Schroder to the Houston Rockets just for him to sign back with the Lakers as a free agent in the summer of 2022. The German would help the Lakers make a push all the way to the Western Conference Finals and Schroder topped that off with a crucial Gold medal-winning effort at the 2023 FIBA World Cup.

Last season, Schroder averaged 14.6 points for Brooklyn, cementing himself as one of their better and more productive pieces.

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