In playoffs, many ways to survive loss of Simmons
He has been talented but flawed, versatile but limited, a scorer who wouldn’t shoot, a rebounder who preferred to play at the top of the offense.
He has been all of those things, Ben Simmons has, since the basketball world was told to revere his abilities and to look the other way at all of his failings.
“I’m an All-Star,” Simmons will say.
So he is, but so was Tyrone Hill, just to borrow the name of an above-average player who once qualified to play in that annual 48 minutes of basketball uselessness. One difference: Tyrone Hill once helped the Sixers reach the NBA’s World Series. As for Simmons, he has been an impediment to sustained postseason success ever since he couldn’t help LSU reach the NCAA Tournament.
Brett Brown will never say that. He has too much to lose. He long has been a friend of the Simmons family. He needs Simmons for his 2021 Australian Olympic team. He admires Simmons’ defense.
And Simmons can put the ball in the basket, something no coach will dismiss without a deep dive into secondary thinking. Brown may not actually even believe it. But it must have passed his mind over the last four years, the most recent two of which have been exasperating to fans of the 76ers: Ben Simmons is too limited to be a foundation piece for an NBA championship team.
That’s not what the Sixers
had in mind when they surrendered their professional dignity in an unholy plot to achieve championship status by losing games. They expected to accumulate enough high draft choices to rotisserieleague their way to fulfillment. And Simmons, as the No. 1 overall pick in the 2016 draft, was to be the finishing touch. He has come close. But in the last two postseasons, his limitations were exposed by defenses walling him off in the lane and making him find other ways to matter, something that doesn’t always happen during the 82-game NBA grind.
Famously refusing to attempt outside shots, Simmons turned clumsy in the postseason, so much so that by last spring Jimmy Butler all but dragged the ball out of his hands. He’s a locker-room handful, Butler. But he helped reveal what too many were pretending not to see: Simmons’ skills are not suited to winning multiple NBA playoff series.
Unless the Sixers’ sports scientists, self-appointed basketball geniuses that they are, can be at their best in the next few weeks, it’s possible the Sixers will have to try this year to win postseason games without Simmons. That’s because in a game against the Washington Wizards, a virtual minor-league team that has no business hanging around playoff-minded outfits, Simmons’ left kneecap was dislodged. An accident, not a result of the Wizards’ physical play, it meant that Simmons would be gone indefinitely. With only five regular-season games to play, that meant he almost certainly would not be around for the earliest hunks of the postseason. All Brown would confirm Friday, though, was that Simmons would not be available for a game against the Orlando Magic.
“This one stings,” he’d said the day before.
Simmons does many things well, from defensive rebounding to running the floor to keying an offense with long entry passes to passing with entertaining skill. His own job security wobbly, Brown already had revealed his awareness that an NBA championship is impossible with a point guard who won’t shoot, handing that assignment to Shake Milton and nudging Simmons into the frontcourt. The injury means Simmons won’t be available there, either, at least for a while. And even should he regain full health, he would need on-court recovery time, something no championship-minded team can afford in the swirl of a postseason.
Against the Magic, Brown retreated to an original idea to blend Joel Embiid, Al Horford and Tobias Harris along his front line. If Horford can just provide reasonably effective 3-point shooting, that plan can thrive. If it doesn’t, and if Brown concludes that Horford is better as a bench jolt and backup center, he can replace Simmons with a shooter. Furkan Korkmaz, maybe. Glenn Robinson III is a possibility. Or maybe Brown will ignore the risk of rookie foul trouble and trust the defense of Matisse Thybulle.
He has options.
“I think in general, with the group, it’s an opportunity to galvanize the team,” Brown said before the Orlando game. “To not have an All-Star tonight, and to have a chance to look at the team respond, I have great confidence.”
Whatever Brown chooses, it will be less complicated than trying to find a way for Simmons to provide in the postseason what he ordinarily does in February against the Hornets. He can surround Embiid with shooters and invite defenses to doubleteam his center, who has added great passing vision to his collection of skills.
Considering that it will take 16 playoff victories to win a championship, the Sixers at some point will miss Simmons’ points, assists, steals and rebounds. There will be a point when the game flows openly, and so will thoughts of what he could have added to that mix.
But Simmons is flawed. And in the postseason, flaws are exposed. For four years and two blunted postseasons, Brown has had to pretend none of that existed. This year, there’s the chance he can coach without that burden.