McCaffery: Sixers fans not hot on Simmons
PHILADELPHIA » Doc Rivers can scribble an X on a whiteboard, pair it with a perforated arrow, swirl it around an O and provide any basketball team with a logical way to achieve.
He’s a basketball coach and a good one, a communicator and a good one, a leader and a good one.
He has won enough games to have a down payment on a plaque in Springfield, Mass. and one more championship will make that a certainty. That might even happen in about six weeks, just as long as Joel Embiid pays attention to his physical therapist.
But there is one result that cannot be achieved with a well-drawn play. It can’t be accomplished with passionate or even rational persuasion. It will not happen even if it is recommended by the most decorated individuals in any field.
No one is going to instruct Philadelphia sports fans who they should celebrate.
Celebrate. That’s Rivers’ verb, the one he uses whenever he wants Sixers fans to show Ben Simmons unconditional devotion.
“I keep saying, ‘Celebrate him,’” Rivers said the other day. “Celebrate all the stuff he does well. We don’t do that enough.” Won’t work, Coach R. Won’t work in this city. Won’t work no matter how loud the message.
Simmons is an entertaining talent. He has wonderful inside moves. He is a passionate rebounder, not simply a collector of long bounces. He shows legendary court awareness. He defends. By those measures, he should have a near-100 percent approval rating, even if he never will consent to Brett Brown’s once-reasonable request to attempt a single in-the-flow threepoint shot each game. But to try to bully-pulpit Philadelphia fans into elevating Simmons to the same stratosphere as Allen Iverson, Chase Utley, Brian Dawkins or Bobby Clarke is a waste of the electricity that powers the microphone.
Any more, it’s redundant to go over the yellowed lists, to try to figure out why the late Jerome Brown touched a nerve but Donovan McNabb only got on too many, why Mike Schmidt was booed for the first dozen years of his career, why Flyers fans adored Rod Brind’Amour more than Claude Giroux. The popularity gap alone between Nick Foles and Carson Wentz will keep sports psychologists and talk-show hosts busy for decades. So enough with those mental gymnastics. This is about 2021 and a 76ers team that will open Round 2 of the playoffs Sunday and a situation that has Rivers stumped.
Naturally, Sixers fans will root for Simmons on game nights, responding to the disturbing-thepeace screams from no fewer than three in-house carnival barkers. But there are reasons he doesn’t connect for longer than any three-hour work shift. And the current situation, the one that had Rivers all worked up, explains it the best.
The Hack-a-Ben craze, which Washington coach Scotty Brooks used to win one game but then overplayed on a night when nothing else was working, is precisely the kind of situation that bothers Philadelphia fans. The short version is that Simmons is so undependable a foul shooter that opposing teams occasionally will hack him deliberately, sending him to the line and, presumably, into professional torment. It’s a little humiliating, and that’s the one thing Philadelphia fans will not tolerate.
Maybe it is different in other markets. But Philadelphia fans want to be the laughers, not the laugh-ees. They want to hoot and holler when some other team’s incompetent shooter is made to stand alone 15 feet from the basket and sweat. Maybe it is a character flaw. But it is just the way they are.
Enjoyment will always spring from a championship. But the Philadelphia fan will accept losing, too, just as long as Buddy Ryan is making fun of the other team on his way to the parking lot.
When Rivers was properly pestered on why he didn’t remove Simmons from the Game 4 loss in Washington and thus puncture the Hack-a-Ben strategy, he did not comprehend that. It’s not his fault. The Chicago native just hasn’t been around here long enough.
Simmons doesn’t care if he is celebrated. That’s not helping him, either. He is indifferent to the city, its fans and even the most rudimentary of sports concerns. Asked the other night about the upcoming series with the Atlanta Hawks, he went out of his way to be a stand-off-ish annoyance.
“My thoughts?” he said. “No real thoughts.”
He’s a wealthy man. If he doesn’t care to talk a little basketball, that’s his right. But while Philadelphia fans will secretly root on any athlete giving the press static, they will not warm to indifference. And Simmons has been indifferent to too much in his five-year NBA career. Foul shooting. Jump shooting. The Hawks.
There is no reason the Sixers can’t win a world championship this year. To do that, they will need every one of Simmons’ on-court charms. A good coach can find a way to bring those out, and Rivers is a good coach, one of the best.
If, at that point, the fans want to celebrate Simmons, they will. Don’t count on it, though.