Simmons dismisses all of the outside criticism

Last season, the Sixers lost their first three games and four of their last five. They would win their final 16, finish with 52 victories and win a firstround playoff series.

So, no, Ben Simmons is not going to worry about a .500 start, including a tense 105-103 victory Saturday over the Charlotte Hornets.

More to the point, he is not going to worry about the popular reaction to the early mediocrity.

“In terms of the fans and the media?” he said as if to supply his own answer, before the Sixers improved to 3-3. “I am worried about everybody who is in this locker room, our coaching staff, our players, our teammates.

“Everybody else, we’re not worried about that.”

So Simmons, at least, will not dwell on popular howls to change lineups or to make trades or, in the words of somebody around there, to go “star hunting” for more help. If anything, he believes the answer to the Sixers’ early sluggishness is simple.

“It’s just playing hard and physical,” he said. “I think that’s one of the things we left last season doing and we need to get that back.”

Simmons was physical around the basket Saturday, collecting six offensive rebounds. But he shot just 5-for-20.

“I feel like I got to the rim multiple times,” Simmons said. “And I think the officiating was great.”

••• With Robert Covington guarding him most of the time, Hornets point guard Kemba Walker went for 37 points. Stats, though, can deceive. For it was Covington’s defense that led to Walker’s 20 missed shots, including 12 clanks from behind the arc.

At the other end, Covington scored 18 points, shooting 4-for-7 from distance, including a triple with 1:44 left, good for a 105-101 cushion.

“It was Covington’s best game of the year,” Brett Brown said.

Few forwards can be as capable of forcing a scoring-minded point guard into 20 flubbed shots than Covington.

“He’s short, quick, shifty,” Covington said. “But I’ve got to guard some of the greatest superstars each and every night. This was another one of those tasks. I had to buckle down.”

••• With Brown, Charlotte coach James Borrego was an assistant to Gregg Popovich in San Antonio.

“I have a lot of memories of Brett,” he said. “He is someone who just loves basketball. He’s a junkie, an absolute junkie. We could sit there and talk basketball, talk X’s and O’s, talk player development. He is one of the first I can remember talking about player development. He really had a knack for getting players better. Even in San Antonio 15 years ago, there wasn’t a lot of player-development talk. And he really took Manu Ginobili and some other players in and said, ‘We’re going to get better every single day, not in the team concept, but in the individual concept.’”

••• Markelle Fultz showed bounce, particularly in his mid-game point-guard minutes, and shot 4-for-9 for 10 points.

“Markelle was really good tonight,” Brown said. ““He pushed the ball in the open court. He had a few big finds on Joel (Embiid). When we can get him in early offense, on the open court, and he is thinking about attacking the rim and going to get the dunk, then the world makes sense.”