Drafting Simmons can put 76ers on the right path
The Philadelphia 76ers enter the 2016 NBA draft as a real hybrid of a team.
The front office, months after a shake-up that saw the 76ers bid farewell to Sam Hinkie and add two Colangelos, has a clear mandate from ownership to get better right away. The patience inherent in collecting assets until one pays off in the way that produces championship teams is gone forever. Opinions can differ over what the Sixers are doing, but the point of the new thinking is to avoid paths that lead to some 50-win seasons, some playoff excitement but a ceiling short of an NBA title. You can call it “The Cleveland,” if you like.
Still, the excitement inherent in what the Sixers are about to do over the next few months will provide clarity about what direction they will take.
Think about where the team is right now: Its three most highprofile players are Jahlil Okafor, Nerlens Noel and Joel Embiid, all lottery picks. Okafor and Noel are getting shopped right now, with questions in the minds of many about Okafor’s long-term capacity for defense and Noel’s ability to perform on offense. From this columnist’s view, neither one is close to a finished product on those ends, respectively, and deserve a chance to develop.
As for Embiid, why should the Sixers assume they’ll ever get significant, healthy seasons out of him? He was picked in the 2014 draft. He’s yet to play a game for Philadelphia. Worse yet, he’s a big man with significant foot issues. Think back to the number of centers with foot issues who got healthier as they got older. It simply doesn’t happen very much.
But what the Sixers really need to do at the draft June 23, no matter which of those two players they keep, no matter how much faith they put in Embiid, no matter if they can get power forward Dario Saric to return from Europe, is very simple:
Draft Ben Simmons with the No. 1 overall pick.
Brandon Ingram is a fine player. Buddy Hield is an elite shooter who appeared to figure out basketball on a macro level in his senior year. But there’s no one in this draft, in the last several drafts, really, who is particularly likely to impact the long-term future of a franchise like Simmons.
“We’ve got good young, developing players, but we don’t have a star where we can say a bona fide star has made it,” Bryan Colangelo, the president of basketball operations who works under his father, Jerry, told Bleacher Report last month. “We are still looking for that first one — if that comes in the form of the first pick in this draft, if that comes in the form of a player we acquire via trade or free agency.”
The thing about Simmons is not just that he’s a good bet to be that star, but his remarkably broad skill set also is perfect for a team that doesn’t quite know what it is or what it has. He’s the perfect pick, then, for a team that might not yet know whether it is building around Okafor, or Noel, or both.
Consider that Noel’s shooting percentage jumped significantly when Ish Smith was around the last couple of seasons — or, put another way, once someone on the team had the basic capability of delivering consistent entry passes, Noel performed at a much better level offensively.
This progression is part of the reason any argument against Simmons to the Sixers falls apart. I’ve heard it multiple times: The Sixers need a point guard. This is actually a pro-Simmons idea, but the idea that, at 6-9, Simmons isn’t that point guard doesn’t hold up to basic scrutiny. Last season with LSU, he put up a 27.4 assist percentage (or the percentage of field goals on which he assisted while he was playing). He was doing that as a college freshman, surrounded by a limited supporting cast. It is fair to imagine with awestruck wonder what that number would jump to while participating in regular pick-androlls with Okafor. Both Smith and T.J. McConnell topped 37% on assists doing that last year.
Defensively, Simmons provides both length and additional imped- iments to those guards and wings who too easily got to the paint against the Sixers last season, leaving a still-learning Okafor to fend for himself too often on the defensive end. Simmons also grabbed 26.4% of the available defensive rebounds while on the floor for LSU last season. His shooting percentage was 56.1% last year, and his player efficiency rating of 29.0 led the Southeastern Conference (a rating of 15 is average).
So to be sure: Simmons is a player with a star profile.
He’ll do plenty for the Sixers in all the other ways, too. Simmons should be a magnet for the supporting players they’ll need to jump from 47 wins in three seasons to a contender for the foreseeable future. He’ll reward those brave, hardy souls who returned to Wells Fargo Center as season ticketholders, waiting for The Process of stocking lottery picks to play out and then coming to terms with the team aborting it midway through last season.
But get excited, Philadelphia. Simmons, it appears, is coming to town.
Simmons is simply magical on the court, and, night after night in 2016-17, the Sixers and their fans will get a chance to enjoy him.
Brett Brown, the beleaguered coach who has continued to preach the positives through all the losing and deserves the chance to put his offense in the hands of a capable leader, will be toasting the moment Simmons’ name is called.
How the process — now separated from The Process — will play out is anybody’s guess. Whether the team’s other two first-round picks, at 24 and 26, can be traded for veteran help or used on sleepers to capitalize on the Simmons Era or even packaged with Okafor or Noel to get another young star, nobody knows.
We’ll all know soon, though. For that, the Sixers should be pleased, their long-suffering fans finally rewarded. Years of uncertainty are about to yield something real, something tangible, whether a title follows or not.