Locked in at line, Simmons giving it his best shot
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The Sixers had their options, and they made their choice. They had their dilemma, and they elected to maintain a commitment. They had reasons to dismiss a problem, but chose instead to work it out.
Ben Simmons was their guy.
Ben Simmons is their guy. Ben Simmons will be their guy, at least through this NBA season.
Keeping faith in a recent No. 1 overall pick and twotime All-Star wasn’t a revolutionary, controversial or dramatic display of basketball wisdom. Even with James Harden available, it was a reasonable decision from Daryl Morey to keep the 24-year-old Simmons on the payroll. He says he thinks Simmons is a superstar. All right. The Sixers’ president is not the first pro-sports executive to dabble in hyperbole. In a way, it’s responsible business. Besides, James Harden is a me-first gunner who always loses in the playoffs and can be scratchy in a locker room. So there was that, too.
So, the Sixers proceeded with Simmons. Their next move: Make it work.
The first way to do that: Insist that he be aggressive heading to the basket and be unafraid to draw fouls and try his shooting luck from the line.
The second way: Make the free throws. If the first way and the second way somehow blended, then the 76ers would have an improved star-level player and an ideal complement to MVP candidate Joel Embiid and the ever-improving Tobias Harris. All of which made the following statistic both shocking and relevant to the Sixers’ world championship chances as they prepared to face Toronto Tuesday night in Tampa: Simmons had made 25 of his last 30 free-throw attempts, including 10 of 14 in a Sunday night loss to the Raptors.
Suddenly, the player who missed 434 of the 1,067 foul shots he attempted in his first three seasons is Herb Magee from 15 feet?
“I love it,” Doc Rivers said. “Sometimes it takes a little bit to do what we are trying to get you to do. And Ben is doing it. He’s aggressive, getting to the basket, making plays, forcing double teams with his speed. And our goal before the year was to get to the foul line.”
High among Rivers’ strengths is that he sees what players can do and puts them in a position to do it well. Not that Brett Brown was wrong to try to coax Simmons into expanding his offensive game beyond six feet; in fact, the man only asked for a $167 million point guard to attempt one three-pointer a game, and for that he was big-timed by the guy who immediately preceded to take none at all.
But Rivers, an avid golfer, quickly figured out how that green broke. So instead of begging Simmons to shoot from outside, he would ask that he do so from inside. For one reason, that wasn’t an easy coaching move, either.
Since Simmons knew that his obscene inability to shoot from outside was on display from the line, he was reluctant to put himself in that spotlight. Typically, he would drive but, rather than draw contact, would instinctively look for perimeter shooters before being deliberately hacked. That eliminated any risk of embarrassment.
“Sometimes it takes a while before seeing what we’re trying to get Ben to do,”
Rivers said. “He’s doing it. He’s aggressive. He’s getting to the basket. He’s making plays. He’s forcing double teams. Our goal before the year was getting him to the line
10 times a night. He did that.”
In the past, the twist to any goal of having Simmons stroll to the line 10 times a game was that opponents would have been delighted if he’d made 20 trips. But if Simmons can be a reliable foul shooter, everything else can open for the Sixers. If defenders are less likely to purposely foul him, he can complete his drives with his ever-impressive finishing moves.
That’s how he recently scored 42 in
Utah, taking no three-pointers but going
12-for-13 from the line. It’s how he was able to win his third consecutive trip to an AllStar Game, as announced Tuesday after a vote from the league coaches.
“We need him to be aggressive,” Embiid said. “He’s doing a great job.”
Simmons is not going to be a three-point shooter. It’s too late for that, and he’s too stubborn anyway. But as if in some annual obligation, he typically is filmed making outside shots during the summer, usually in empty gyms with no defenders. In early warmups before games, also with no defenders, he typically shoots with acceptable accuracy. So shooting from the line without a hand in his face should not be an impossible assignment for a professional basketball player.
“My scoring has been a lot higher,” Simmons has said. “As long as I can keep doing that and stay locked in and keep working, I think it’s scary.”
If he is locked in, it’s the key to unlock everything else.
If he drives without the fear of foul-linefailure,
he can score at an All-Star pace.
If he is scoring that well inside, it will draw just enough defensive help to free shooters.
If the shooters benefit from the added space, it will open more for Embiid. If Embiid is free, he will dominate. If Embiid dominates, apply for the parade permit.
Scary?
“We’ll need that confidence from him throughout the whole year to get to where we want to go,” Harris said. “He’s putting in the work.”
Against only the best teams and with the best coaches having a chance to scheme in the postseason, Simmons will be walled off in the lane. But he is talented enough to solve that, as long as he is confident enough to draw fouls.
Though he was 1-for-6, total, from the arc this season, he had made 154 of 265 foul shots heading into Tampa Tuesday. That’s a career-best 67.1 percentage. He’s their guy. And that’s one way to make it work.