Anfernee Simons seems to be sticking around. So now what?

We’ve spent most of the summer mostly ignoring Anfernee Simons, other than to say he’s probably going to get traded. 

There's good reason for that. The Celtics never scheduled an introductory press conference, mostly because they didn’t want to introduce a guy in early July only for him to spend August or September apartment hunting in a different city. Even as I write this, I’m still not 100% sure he’ll make it to opening night. 

But he hasn’t been traded yet, and at this point it doesn’t seem like he will. A recent NBA feature shows Simons working out at the Celtics' practice facility with player development coach Ross McMains, which means all parties involved are comfortable with Simons being seen as a Celtic. 

Which now means it’s probably time to start envisioning what life with Simons might be like. 

Let’s be honest here, things are going to be pretty awkward right off the bat. Simons is going to get hit with a bunch of legitimate questions over whether he feels wanted by the Celtics. They acquired him as part of a roster reshuffling, and the consensus was that Boston wasn’t finished making moves. Again, the Celtics themselves weren’t sure how this would go, which pushed the questions for Simons off until media day. It's fair for people to wonder whether he’ll finish this season in Boston. 

So right away, we’ll need to figure out how well Simons can function with the Sword of Damocles hanging over his head. How will that impact his play and his decision-making? Can he function as a member of the team when he’s not fully sure if that team will be three or four months? 

For now, we’ll just leave it at “he’ll have to,” because he’s a 26-year-old offensive force on an expiring contract. He needs to show he can play nice regardless of the situation so he can get big money next summer, so until he shows otherwise, we’ll just work with the assumption that he will and revisit that if he proves otherwise. 

Simons is an unquestioned offensive talent. He shoots the ball very well, including off the dribble, so he can create for himself whenever he needs to. He’s the only Celtic on this year’s roster who has been at the top of the opposing team’s scouting report, so he’s very comfortable being the target of all the defensive pressure. 

His isolation scoring compares to Jaylen Brown’s. Both ran almost the exact rate of isolation, and they finished last season almost even in points per possession (Brown: 0.92, Simons: 0.91). Brown was a more efficient shooter, but Simons turned it over less frequently. Ultimately, they performed very similarly in this role. 

Simons’ pull-up shooting also compares pretty closely to Brown’s. Simons shot 38.3% on 7.2 pull-up jumpers per game, while Brown shot 37.3% on 6.8. His driving was more along Jayson Tatum’s lines, with just one fewer per game. Tatum was a better finisher and passer, but Simons’ assist percentage wasn’t too far off Tatum’s (8.1% vs. 9.4%) and Simons turned it over less (5.1% vs. 5.5%). 

I don’t want to dive TOO deep into the metrics because the Trail Blazers and Celtics were vastly different teams last season, but the point in bringing these numbers up right now is to say that Simons, offensively, compares pretty well to Boston’s top offensive threats. He might even be a little underrated as a passer. 

Bottom line, if we want to characterize the Celtics as being “stuck” with Simons, then they're stuck with a hell of an offensive player. 

His defense? Well …

Simons is going to have a lot to prove on the defensive end. He’s smaller, but he’s not slight. He has the tools to be at least a passable defender, but he hasn’t really been that. We can take an optimistic or pessimistic view on whether he’ll become that. 

An optimist will look at his history and say he never had much motivation or reason to put effort into that end. He joined a Blazers team with Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum, two big offensive talents who got massive paydays while being terrible defenders. Then that Blazers team got bad, and putting effort into the defensive end for a tanking team didn’t really make much sense. And so, with those things in mind, there is a lot of untapped potential for Simons to find some solid defense … especially on a team that emphasizes defense the way Boston does. 

A pessimist will say that seven years of bad habits will be hard to shake, and that Simons has already made plenty of money without having to put in that work. At this point, those habits will be hard to break, especially for a team that hasn’t exactly shown him that they want to make that long-term investment in his future. 

A lot of Boston’s success this season will be determined by how good or bad they are defensively. Simons and Brown will provide plenty of firepower, especially with Derrick White, Payton Pritchard, and Sam Hauser there to occupy defensive attention. Scoring won’t be much of an issue, but stopping opponents will be. If Simons can commit himself on that end of the floor and be solid, this could be a surprising season for him and the Celtics. 

We don’t know whether Simons will start or come off the bench yet. The Celtics will probably mix their lineups this preseason to see which combinations work best together and then make that determination. There's a strong argument for both. 

Simons as a starter would take a lot of pressure off Brown. He’s not Tatum, but he’s an explosive scorer who demands attention, so having Simons out there with White and Brown would make doubling very difficult. 

Simons off the bench would allow Boston to stagger their two most explosive scorers and give Simons a primary role he’s comfortable with. Simons put up big numbers with haphazard lineups in Portland, and that's what Boston has on the bench. 

Obviously, how the Celtics finish games will be critically important, too. They may go away from Simons with small leads, or at least go to an offense/defense substitution pattern with maybe Jordan Walsh. They might feature Simons more if Boston is down 10 heading into the final couple of minutes. 

Either way, Joe Mazzulla will have options with Simons. He might not have been Boston’s primary target this offseason, but there is a best-case scenario where he becomes an important piece of Boston’s rebuilding process. 

Simons’ future in Boston might depend on how many deficiencies he fixes and how desperate other teams are for offensive help at the deadline. For now, he’s probably going to start the season as a Celtic. We’ll see if he finishes it here.