NBA fans in Philadephia and beyond are eagerly awaiting the resolution of the Ben Simmons situation, one of the biggest stories in the NBA, where the player has allegedly vowed never to play for the hometown 76ers team again. Evidently, the feeling is mutual, and the pressure is on the Sixers front office to rid themselves of, AND bring in a comparable package in return for, a player who, at least through today, has overstayed his welcome in the eyes of much of its fan base. But the Sixers and their fans need to be careful what they ask for. Players like this aren’t easily replaceable. Ben Simmons, who can do everything on the basketball court except shoot, now finds himself playing in an era where players who can shoot are at least as coveted as those with his own set of skills, even if other areas of their game are lacking. Ben Simmons was born too late.
BEN SIMMONS, THE PLAYER
Born in Australia, Ben Simmons was selected with the first pick by the Philadelphia 76ers in the 2016 NBA Draft after playing college ball for one year at Louisiana State University. An injury sidelined him for his entire rookie year, but in the four years that followed, he won more than his share of individual awards. Rookie of the Year in 2018. All-NBA Third Team and Steals leader in 2020. Runner-up for NBA Defensive Player of the Year in 2021. Two-time NBA All-Star and All-Defensive Team.
His height is listed at anywhere between 6’9″ and 6’11”. He can handle the ball. He can pass. He can rebound. He can guard all five positions. He can get to the basket. He moves the ball. He doesn’t force shots and stays within his shooting range. He connects on a very high percentage of his field-goal attempts. Entering his sixth NBA season, his rounded per-game averages are 16 points, eight rebounds, eight assists, and nearly two steals while shooting 56 percent from the field and 60 percent from the free-throw line. He’s had career-high games (not all in the same contest) of 42 points, 22 rebounds, 17 assists, and seven steals.
HERE’S THE PROBLEM
The problem for Ben Simmons is that we’re in the year 2021, squarely within what will be remembered as the era of the three-point field goal. If you cannot help your team spread the floor on offense with your perimeter shooting, you are considered a liability on that end of the floor. In 2021, if you’re considered a liability on offense, then you’re considered a liability, period, only accentuated if you were a lottery pick, and more so if you were the first pick overall. It doesn’t matter if you can do everything else. Throw in some low-scoring efforts (19 points on 14 field goal attempts combined in Games Five through Seven against Atlanta) and missed free throws in the postseason (15 for 45 in the Atlanta series) while losing a playoff series to a lower seed and toss in some Philadelphia, and the result is the current impasse.
Philadelphia is not alone as a basketball town in wanting its star players to have the ability to score. A city that has had Wilt Chamberlain, Billy Cunningham, Julius Erving, Moses Malone, Charles Barkley, Allen Iverson, and others wear the colors, has grown accustomed to having players who can get buckets. The city’s passionate basketball fan base, which recently and patiently endured several years of “rebuilding” while the front office figured out what “the process” of building a winner entails, will understandably be very demanding when the team finally assembles a roster deemed capable of winning.
As another former Sixer with a well-rounded game, Andre Iguodala, can tell you, it doesn’t matter if a star player’s game is slightly flawed, as long as that flaw is NOT the inability to score (the basketball, as the term goes nowadays) and land amongst the league’s top scorers at over 25 points per game. In the postseason, a well-coached team will do all it can defensively to prevent a player like Simmons from driving to the basket, given his unwillingness and inability to score from the perimeter. And they’ll just as happily foul him and dare him to make free throws.
Ben Simmons is not the first offensively challenged NBA star player in league history, he was just born too late.
RECENT HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES WHO DIDN’T SCORE MUCH
The most recent 2021 Basketball Hall of Fame class included Ben Wallace, the undersized center, lockdown interior defender, ferocious rebounder, and shot-blocker who played a key role in the Detroit Pistons 2004 NBA title run as their defensive anchor. He was named NBA Defensive Player of the Year four times and was a four-time NBA All-Star. He was an annual fixture on the NBA’s All-Defensive Team for several years. His number 3 jersey hangs from the rafters at the Pistons’ home arena.
Ben Wallace’s career scoring average was 5.7 points per game.
Dennis Rodman was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011. Rodman is a five-time NBA champion, two-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year, seven-time member of the NBA All-Defensive First Team, and was the league’s rebounding champion for seven consecutive years. It’s not difficult to find a boxscore showing Rodman scoring less than 5 points and grabbing over 20 boards. His number 10 jersey hangs from the rafters in the Pistons’ home arena.
Dennis Rodman’s career scoring average was 7.3 points per game.
There are many more examples. Folks in the New York City area saw Jason Kidd lead the New Jersey Nets to two consecutive Eastern Conference Final appearances, dominating games without being a top scorer. And he became a better perimeter shooter later in his career. The league has seen many top players come through who weren’t pure shooters, and couldn’t shoot free throws.
Ben Simmons is on a Hall of Fame track, especially if he messes around and wins an NBA championship. But without some serious reconciliation, his number 25 jersey won’t be hanging from the rafters in Philadelphia.
“WHY DOESN’T HE WORK ON HIS SHOT?”
A common criticism of Simmons is that he doesn’t spend enough time in the gym working on his shot. I’m not an insider, so I have no idea how much time Simmons devotes to improving his shooting accuracy. Most of us have no idea. What we can assume is that over the years he’s worked feverishly on his ball-handling, passing, defense, and rebounding. No one makes off-season videos showing guys working on their ball-handling, passing, rebounding, and defense, but he’s adept at all of them.
So the record shows that over Simmons’ first two seasons as an NBA player, he attempted 17 three-point field goals and missed them all. For his career, he has connected on 5 of 34 attempts (15 percent), including 3 of 10 in 2020-21 (an improvement). For context, Klay Thompson once launched 24 three-point attempts in a single game; in their first preseason game of 2021, the Golden State Warriors shot 69 of their 100 field goal attempts from outside the arc. These are the times we’re living in.
We’ve seen many players at this level shy away from parts of the game that aren’t a strength, mostly on the defensive end. At age 25, Simmons can still improve his free throw percentage and develop an effective midrange shot at least, but not everyone was born to shoot a basketball. A good many players come into the NBA as poor defenders and, 12 years later, leave as poor defenders. It’s overlooked if you can score.
SIXERS AREN’T TRADING SIMMONS FOR CHEAP
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. Though currently “devalued” based on his performance the last time we saw him play, his perceived lukewarm endorsement from the coach and teammates following their unexpected series loss to Atlanta in June (it’s not really a good idea to take comments seriously minutes after a loss like that) for which he took a huge share of the blame, and now his absence from training camp and trade demands, he remains one of the league’s premier players.
What we do know is that for all the criticism of the player, the Philadelphia 76ers would be insane to trade this guy and not get a healthy package of players and draft picks in return. The same fan base that wants Simmons gone would eviscerate the front office if the team ended up on the bad side of a lopsided trade involving Simmons. It’s a tricky spot to be in. Players like Simmons are difficult to find. Perhaps he grew weary of the criticism, or maybe he saw how Milwaukee converted former interior scorer Brook Lopez into almost exclusively a three-point shooter, creating space for Giannis Antetokounmpo (not a pure shooter, either) to make his drives to the basket.
CONCLUSION: RUN IT BACK
It doesn’t seem fair, but many of the league’s most popular players have been proficient on only one end of the court, usually on offense. A unique player like Simmons might actually be hurt by his own versatility as a guy who can do everything away from the basket except shoot the ball. Like Wallace and Rodman, he might have to mess around and win a title to change the way he’s perceived. But unlike Wallace and Rodman, Simmons has the ball in his hands a lot, and even if he doesn’t become a sharpshooter from the perimeter, he’ll need to get that free throw percentage up. He can do it. He had a five-game run in February where he connected on 36 of 45 free-throw attempts, including a 42-point game against Utah (Joel Embiid missed that game) where he sank 12 of 13 free throw attempts.
I’m not a Sixer fan. and perhaps a change of scenery would be best for the player, but I hope they work things out with Simmons. Good players usually figure things out. He’ll have to endure some nastiness and lockerroom side-eye should he return, and trips to the free-throw line during home games will be met with groans from the fans, but he can overcome that. What’s missing is confidence, and in Game Seven of the Atlanta series when he opted to pass to Matisse Thybulle under the basket instead of dunking the ball himself, he looked like a guy who didn’t want to risk getting fouled and having to shoot free throws in front of the home fans, who were already riding him. Wasn’t a great look, but hardly worth running a guy out of town for.
The Sixers should try to work things out with Simmons and run it back one more time. They could always trade Simmons for shooting, but the grunt work will have to be replaced and that won’t be easy. The odds of the Sixers getting equal value in a deal are slim.
Grunt work is underrated, especially when a star player is willing to do it.
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
