Donnellon: Simmons, Ingram, and the riddle of the Sixers

``You are going to have to ask that question on June 23 when we are ready to announce it,'' Bryan Colangelo told reporters late Tuesday night, and so the latest chapter of uncertainty of a team that should have played its last three seasons in Riddler uniforms begins.

Ben Simmons? Brandon Ingram? Two players, two opposing skill sets, each set containing a valid antidote to what ails this team the most, yet each surrounded with just enough uncertainty to create another regretful chapter in team history.

It would be great to have someone like Ingram, who could hit 3s from everywhere, a 6-9 player whose potential is almost impossible to project given the massive improvement he made over just a few months, from skinny overmatched kid to the best player for college basketball's version of the Yankees. Anyone who remembers what Kevin Durant looked like at this kid's age can't help but, well… dream.

It would be great to have someone like Simmons, the player Magic Johnson has deemed the best he's seen at his age since LeBron James was a teenager, already a man at 6-10, 240 as James was at his age, still with areas to improve – most notably his outside shooting.

Can't go wrong, right? And yet you can. There's something incredibly unsettling about taking a player with Simmons' skill set who was oddly unable to get his team into the NCAA tournament, or even over the hump in several televised games last season. Maybe not for a team like the Lakers, who once drafted Johnson, who once drafted James Worthy. Not for a team whose fan base sees reward first, risk second.

Us? Not so much. We've been hit by friendly fire, time and time again, whether you're talking Shawn Bradley or Jerry Stackhouse or Evan Turner or the more recent top picks currently scattered among other NBA teams -- or even the recently deposed GM, who after showing such reluctance to discuss and explain his process while amid the process, did so in a now-infamous 13-page treatise on his way out.

With the ability to do everything but shoot the ball well – at least yet – Simmons could be the Monster Glue that pulls this whole thing together, and quickly. Points, assists, rebounds, even some steals -- like James, he fills up the scoresheet on most nights.

His comparative weakness, at least now, is Ingram's calling card – range. Ingram's weakness is, at least now, everything else. Like Ingram, Simmons also seems capable of playing several positions in the NBA – and probably more immediately. But while Magic sees a James prototype, others see his career mimicking that of Lamar Odom.

The character issue seems overblown. My greater trepidation involves mettle, specifically in his willingness to embrace the pressure of being a star. A willing passer, Simmons may be too willing. Despite his size, he's not much of a defender. Despite his size, he dribbles to create opportunity.

There's no lack of will to Ingram's shooting. By the time last year's NCAA tournament rolled around, he was Duke's best player and go-to-guy. At age 18. Simmons owned the conversation all winter. Ingram was the darling of March.

So who do you pick to pry this team out of those Riddler uniforms? I've switched over the last 24 hours from Simmons to Ingram, but that's probably the fear talking. There have just been too many busts in our previous boom-or-bust scenarios to believe there's not something to how Simmons ended his brief college career.

Or in how Ingram ended his.