McCaffery

All-Star guard would play every position on the floor.

Brown’s plan is solid and overdue. As the sport careens in that direction anyway, Simmons can be basketball’s defining positionless player. His handle is perfect, his court vision legendary, his determination to rebound admirable, his versatility on defense a multi-million-dollar value. He can also finish around the basket with worldclass effectiveness.

Just as important in a situation where players are to be tested regularly for a virus and, if unfortunate, could be quarantined for a substantial number of games, it’s vital for Brown to ready a player with the versatility to play at any spot on the floor. Maybe one night, Simmons is a point guard. Should a forward fail a virus test the next, he could be a fourman. The Sixers are flush with centers, and Brown is making noises about Joel Embiid playing 35-plus minutes a night. But Simmons would make more sense as a backup to Embiid or Al Horford than, say, Kyle O’Quinn or Norvel Pelle in the sixth game of a playoff series.

At least that’s where is stands early in Training Camp II, with eight regular-season games left, then a postseason that will determine Brown’s immediate career path. Simmons is shifting to the frontcourt, Shake Milton will be handed the ball, and Horford will back up Embiid and stay fresh, at age 34, for critical late-game minutes.

“It’s incredibly early,” Brown was saying Tuesday morning, on a video hookup from Florida. “This is

our fourth practice. And we don’t really play a game until the first few days of August. So this is where I have started this particular camp, with Shake with the ball and moving Ben all over the place.”

To a point, that’s unfortunate for the Sixers four years into Simmons’ career. When they made him the No. 1 pick in the 2016 draft, then unfurled him in summer ball, it was instantly obvious that he was a point guard. Period. His ability to key an offense with a 30-foot entry pass, to swerve into the lane and blindly locate open jump-shooters, to make sure every teammate touched the ball and to go baseline to baseline in about six strides seemed to make him the prototype for the 21st century NBA lead guard.

There was one issue, though.

That one.

And after enough postseason opportunities lost because he had a point guard refusing to shoot from more than six feet, including the last one when Jimmy Butler turned that into a sinister public issue for his own benefits, Brown has surrendered. He knows he can’t keep trying the same policies and expect Josh Harris, who has baseball and football teams to buy, to keep paying him to coach.

Rarely one to go along with any script, and the one who responded to his coach’s request to attempt a singular 3-point shot per game by not taking any for the rest of the season, even Simmons has remained calm as his job description has been massaged.

“All of us, once you put us out there, it’s just basketball at the end of the day,” Simmons said Tuesday. “I don’t think the

guys are worried too much about the positioning names. At the end of the day, you’ve just got to play.”

That wasn’t the case two years ago when Brown let slip that his future could be in the frontcourt and Simmons sat defiantly in his Madison Square Garden locker stall saying once, twice and more, “I’m a point guard.” So consider that progress.

The Sixers were trending toward Milton as a starter when the regularseason hit its lengthiest timeout. But that was a response to what appeared to be Simmons’ seasonthreatening back injury. The hiatus having allowed Simmons to heal and Horford to regenerate, it was possible that Brown could have re-committed to his original starting unit, the one he proclaimed during the first training camp was capable of propelling the Sixers into the NBA Finals. Instead, he used the sabbatical to learn. And what he learned was that it is virtually impossible to win an NBA championship with a point guard refusing to shoot. Milton, a 43.5-percent distance shooter this season, does not have that problem.

So it will be Milton and Josh Richardson in the backcourt, with Embiid, Tobias Harris and Simmons. Horford, too uncomfortable sharing a frontcourt with Embiid, will provide experience in reserve.

It should work for Simmons, and it should work for a franchise waiting since 1983 to win a championship.

The gym, even if it was later than so many others, has finally been heard.