Investing in Jonathon Simmons

At the end of the Spurs’ season, I started a bunch of blog posts that I never finished. I started one about Tony Parker’s injury. I started one saying goodbye to Manu Ginobili. I started one about the human doorstop that LaMarcus Aldridge has become. I batted around a million ideas about Kawhi Leonard. But, in the end, I didn’t do anything with these ideas. They are still all sitting in a single Word document that looks more like an index than an essay. I didn’t finish any of those posts because the Spurs ended up doing very little this offseason. Chris Paul is in Houston.

What the Spurs did do, however, is renounce their rights to Jonathon Simmons.

I always liked Jonathon Simmons because Jonathon Simmons liked dunking people. He would come into games for brief stints or long stints, depending on how many starters Gregg Popovich decided to play or not play on a particular night. He played like a dude who might get fired as a movie extra for taking all the fight scenes seriously. If Jonathon Simmons were cast in a Rocky film or Raging Bull, Sylvester Stallone or Robert De Niro would ask the director to dismiss him. You want guys like that on your team. You want them to step into games, especially playoff games, and light fires.

Read More: The last of the big-name neophytes sign in week two

Jonathon Simmons did those sorts of things. He would dunk. He would make a shot he shouldn’t have even shot. He would plow full steam ahead. Two years ago against the Thunder, in Tim Duncan’s last playoff series, Jonathon Simmons was noticeably absent from Popovich’s playoff rotation. As Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook took over the series, a lot of San Antonio fans wondered if the Spurs should fight fire with fire. That’s the kind of player the Magic, who just signed Jonathon Simmons to $18 million over three years, are getting. They will want to see more of him.

When Jonathon Simmons first showed up in San Antonio, you thought, “Wow! Who the hell is this guy?” Because he was a rookie, you figured you had a lot of time to learn the answer. But Jonathon Simmons was a 26-year-old rookie, and he’s 27 now. The ceiling was probably already at eye level.

Jonathon Simmons’ tenure with San Antonio lasted for only two years. That time frame and the fact he was always something of a project meant fans knew him in flashes. You called him by his full name, not Jonathan, not Simmons, but Jonathan Simmons, and you said it like you were reading it off a trading card.

But what you saw always led you to believe there was more. For a long time now, the Spurs organization has been in the habit of finding guys who were more than people thought they were. Sometimes the team holds on to these guys: Danny Green and Patty Mills. Sometimes the team does not: Gary Neal and Goran Dragic.

Sometimes the NBA is like that. You never know how long a particular player will play in a particular uniform.

Next: Las Vegas Summer League feeds the NBA rookie hype train

Then again, Jonathon Simmons wasn’t supposed to wear an NBA uniform at all. He wore three different uniforms in college, playing for Paris Junior College, Midland College and the University of Houston. His big break happened when he paid $150 out of his own pocket for a tryout with the Austin Toros. Turns out it was  a smart investment, even if San Antonio eventually decided otherwise.