As a practical matter, Jerami stays (UFA free agent). Ant plus the picks it takes for Mikal Bridges (Friend of Dame). Dame, Sharpe, Bridges, Grant
I agree with a lot of what you said. The only exception of Ainge putting the untouchable label on Lauri Markkanen. Markkanen is a good player, but far from a superstar. Ainge would be wild to not entertain offers for him if he could get a superstar player in return.
Ant averages 21.1 points a game, and Fultz just had a career high 28 points in a game. Fultz is a year older and while he's making about $6m/year less than Simons, he's a UFA after next year and probably will get more than Simons is getting paid. I personally still think Simons is a markedly better player and prospect.
I'm not the biggest Ant guy in the world, but he's easily better (and more valuable) than Fultz. Certainly a better fit next to Dame.
Fultz has made his mark as a defensive stopper. Simons as a guy who can score in bunches if hot. If not hot gives you little of anything else. Pick your poison
So you're saying a smaller, much crappier defender, who is not a good enough point to prevent Dame getting constantly doubled, is better next to Dame, despite the fact that whenever they play together, we never get a good game out of both of them? Here's what Ant is good at: scoring tears. That's great - I love to see it when it happens. But here's what Ant is not good at: distributing the ball, defense (he's even worse than Dame at that), rebounding - y'know, EVERYTHING ELSE. Meanwhile
I personally think I’d rather have Simons with his age and contract. But I always look at the big picture in everything over the here and now
Dame gets doubled far less with Ant on the court than without. Every top 10 player in the league gets doubled some. If you really want to put a 6'4" defender who is a sub 30% 3pt shooter next to Dame, then let's just sign Thybulle to 35% of Fultz's contract. Opponents want the ball out of Dame's hand. I don't want to give them what they want by putting the ball in Fultz's hands instead of Dame. I didn't put a ton of value on Ant's 9 game sample size last year when were were tanking and I'm not going to give any more value to Fultz in the same scenario.