Letting It Fly
Locked-in Simmons ready to take best shot on the court
has nowhere else to go.
It took a major injury, a major playing-style decision, and every one of Brett Brown’s nerves. But it’s over now, the great development of a unique talent. “I am locked in,” Simmons said. From every possible angle, he is. Selected No. 1 overall in the 2016 draft, the overwhelming public belief at the time, one fueled by an unflattering documentary of him during his one goofy season at LSU, was that he would report to Philadelphia out of obligation only. Then, it was feared, he would race to the Lakers at his first opportunity.
He never did. Rather, he just signed a $170,000,000 extension to remain a Sixer for another five years, or, in other words, for the core of his professional career.
A 6-10 player of unique skill, the Sixers drafted him as a forward. But within three summer league possessions, it was clear that he was a point guard. So, that’s how he would be sold. Yet by his third season, including a red-shirt year to recover from a training camp injury, he was so predictably reluctant to shoot from distance that Jimmy Butler rightly demanded the ball. That made Simmons a forward for many postseason possessions.
That, too, changed quickly. Butler, a noted coach irritant, was not resigned. And Simmons was assured, with that contract if not with a wink, that he is the lead guard until he decides not to be the lead guard.
“That,” Brett Brown said, “is not going to change.” He’s no longer injured. He’s no longer saying he has no interest in shooting a three-point shot.
He is no longer the new player in the operation, but rather a co-franchiseface with Joel Embiid.
That’s why he recently spilled that he has fallen in love with basketball again, and why, finally, he can help push the Sixers deeper than two rounds into a postseason.
“I don’t know what changed, a switch or whatever it was,” he said. “But the summer has been good for me.”
If so, it will be good for the Sixers. Because if Simmons has reached the point where he has become comfortable, then it means he has only one real thing to prove: That he can be a springtime winner. Though impossible to prove, there were enough indicators late last season that he was not going to coexist with Butler for much longer. Not only had Butler essentially poached his job, but he was not afraid to create a stir at one postseason press conference by admitting that he was encouraging Simmons, out loud, to take more shots. Simmons, though, was not ready for that. He should have been ready. But he wasn’t. And Butler’s interference was not going to help. In fact, it was a deterrent. Simmons would become a shooter when he was ready, not when he was ordered to by Jimmy Butler.
So when the Sixers finally surrendered and allowed Butler to leak to Miami, videos began to surface of Simmons taking and making lengthy shots in summertime West Coast pickup games. He was not facing intense defenses. And the three-point line was not of NBA distance. But he was shooting. From deep.
By Monday, when he surfaced at the preseason Media Day, Simmons was typically chilly when the questioning turned to his willingness to launch three-point shots. Yet just one year after shooing away any such talk and, in the process, big-timing Brown, at least he had begun to accept that he must score on more than drives and dunks.
“If they are open,” he allowed, of three-point opportunities, “I will take them.”
He has never made a major-league threepointer. So he’s not going to replace what was lost when JJ Redick bolted to New Orleans. But if Simmons can score consistently from 15 feet while occasionally swishing a triple, then defenses will not be able to so sag on him that it interferes with everything else the Sixers have planned for their atthe-rim offense.
At the most vital level, that concept clicked for Simmons. Assured he will not be going anywhere for a while, it occurred to him that in order to be recognized as one of the game’s greats, he will need to win a championship. Or two. And since the Sixers were ejected from consecutive postseasons in large part because he had not been a full-service offensive player, he knew he could no longer be so rigid in his style.
“Every other individual accolade comes along with doing your job,” Simmons said. “You can’t say you want to go out and win certain things unless it is going to help the team win. Because I can tell you right now that we’d rather have a championship right now than anything. That’s just my mentality.
“If we win, that’s more important than any individual accolades.”
For his first two oncourt seasons, he tried to prove he could fit into a winning team despite his unique individual skill. He was a Rookie of the Year and an All-Star. So he was recognized.
“I think I was too worried about what people were saying or what was going on around,” Simmons said. “Outside noises. And I was really able to block them out this summer and really focus.
“I am more confident in what I am doing.” He’s the point guard. He has a long-term mega-deal. Jimmy Butler is gone. He will be willing to shoot from distance.
Ben Simmons is locked in.