Simmons, Embiid need to learn that improvement is a process
PHILADELPHIA » The Sixers played five playoff games against the Celtics, lost four, and immediately continued a recent franchise tradition. Basically, they decided that they were great anyway.
That’s what they do, the Sixers. Sometimes it is with a sly purpose, like when Josh Harris called a 19-win season a “huge success.” Sometimes it is by accident, like when they fired a confetti cannon just for sending a game into overtime. So, they would do it again, with Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons throwing out the ceremonial first dismissal of reality.
“There are going to be a lot of rings,” Embiid would tell Simmons after the final game, “on these fingers.”
Go ahead. Go right ahead. Try to tell him otherwise. And try to tell Simmons otherwise. See where that goes. Yet that’s the No. 1 challenge Brett Brown will face as he tries to take the Sixers from where they were when a rebuilding process started to where they must go to make the unprofessional, repugnant plan work. He must convince two talented but delusional potential superstars that the rest of the NBA is not stocking up on their replica jerseys. He must convince them to work on those things that separate them from the greatness that they already are wrongly convinced they possess.
Simmons was entertaining last season, demonstrating a worldclass grasp of basketball geometry, always finding open men, often from 60 feet away. And Embiid was rightfully an All-Star, and at one point a reasonable MVP candidate. But they were not perfect. More, they were not, in effect, what they and their fans believe them to be: The Sixers’ latter-day answer to Magic Johnson and Kareem AbdulJabbar.
Yet that’s what they believe. Repeatedly, Embiid sniffs that no other NBA center is in his class. He won’t even acknowledge that he is behind All-NBA first-team center Anthony Davis on that list, harrumphing that the Pelicans’ superstar is a forward.
Even when Embiid was exposed as being either too slow or too exhausted late in a season to effectively defend pick-and-rolls or make effective switches against Boston, he found it to be humorous. That would have been him recently tweeting that Celtics center Aron Baynes, whom he calls “man bun,” is in the league only to be dunked on.
Where exactly does a coach go from there? How can Brown convince Embiid to get in better shape and to better execute at the defensive end if he can’t even recognize or even seem to be bothered that he was able only to win one playoff round? Embiid’s position isn’t even arrogant. It’s sincere. He sincerely believes he is the best at what he does in the world and that everyone else plays the game just so he can make them look foolish.
In many ways, Simmons is the same way. When Brown suggested during the season that at some point he could play some power forward, Simmons basically dismissed the topic, reminded everyone that he is a special point guard, and essentially made his head coach spend the rest of the season walking the idea back. But if the Celtics revealed anything in the Eastern Conference semifinals, it was what scouts and critics were hollering all along: At some point in the playoffs, point guards must shoot from distance. Simmons can’t. He won’t. And even when the Celtics walled off his route to the basket, he wouldn’t. For that, Brown insisted there will be a vigorous attempt this summer to improve the outside shooting of a unique, star-level player who doesn’t even know which hand to use for a jump shot. Good luck?
“There will be some intense refinement,” Brown said. “But to call it like a complete blowup and makeover, I am not prepared to do that.”
The Sixers will hire a new shooting coach and encourage Simmons to sledge-card himself into their Camden training center throughout the summer to work on threepoint shooting. He may. But in those rare moments of practice when the press is allowed to spy, Simmons rarely, if ever, is seen practicing three-pointers. Dario Saric, by contrast, never stopped trying to improve his long-distance form, and, in his second NBA season, became an effective three-point shooter.
Embiid will be entering his fifth NBA season in the fall, Simmons his third. Neither made the All-NBA first team, even in a 52-win season. Simmons received some votes, but didn’t even make the third team. Both are young. Both can improve. But will they want to improve?
Soon enough, LeBron James will become a free agent and do his usual thing. He’ll find a place where he believes the young talent structure is in place to support his championship plans. It’s been widely assumed that Embiid and Simmons would qualify as sturdy enough foundation. But is it? And will James see it that way? Will anyone?
Simmons and Embiid were excellent in helping the Sixers to those 57 wins, playoffs included. But they must improve. The Sixers will provide them with the support to become better. But it won’t be easy for them, or for their head coach, to convince them that it will be necessary. It won’t be easy when they are already convinced they are champions just waiting for another blast of confetti.