Ben Simmons’ Injury Helps Figure Out Frontcourt Logjam

While the news of Ben Simmons‘ injury is painful for the Philadelphia 76ers, it helps them to figure out their frontcourt logjam.

The Philadelphia 76ers season seemingly was a wash before it even started after training camp ended. The news had just come out that Ben Simmons suffered a fracture in a bone in his foot, and the future of the season was highly questionable. After all, Simmons was likely the best player on the team, and the player with the brightest future.

While his future certainly still can be bright, his immediate future is clear — he will undergo surgery and miss the first several months of his rookie season. This will inhibit Simmons from making himself a front runner for the Rookie of the Year Award, and will also hurt the Sixers as far as how many games they will win.

Vegas set the Sixers line at 27.5 wins for the season. To me, that seemed high as it was, and with Simmons out, it’s definitely bound to be lower than 27 wins this year. Realistically, I think we’re looking at anywhere from 15 to 20 wins, depending on how the year plays out, and if the Sixers make any trades at any point.

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While the Simmons injury is negative, and certainly hurts the team in many ways, it also helps them figure out one of their biggest questions that has been looming over them for the entire offseason — the frontcourt logjam.

While it doesn’t seem like Simmons’ absence really affects the logjam a whole lot, it could end up being a deciding factor in which of the three players stick around as Sixers, and which players are traded.

Nerlens Noel, Jahlil Okafor, and Joel Embiid are all big men that were at one point considered to be potential top overall picks in their respective NBA Drafts. To have them all on the same team seems like a good thing — stuffed talent on a roster seems to be positive — at first glance, but further analysis shows that there’s no way you can have all three players on the same squad and have it work out. They all need and deserve lots of playing time, and the amount of minutes just aren’t there unless the Sixers can take things into triple overtime every single night.

With Simmons set to be the team’s starting power forward come opening night, there was reason to believe he would also be getting starter caliber minutes. That takes up a lot of time for Brown to potentially use one of the three of the big men in the four spot.

Noel didn’t do well as a forward last year, but Okafor didn’t do too bad. Embiid has shown signs that he could function in the four as well, and seems willing to try any position on the floor. But with Simmons on the floor, it just wasn’t going to be easy to get him or Okafor in as a four very often.

What that would mean is that the Sixers would have less overall time to show off their big men, less overall time to prove that they’re tradable, and less overall time to get them all on the floor together to see who works best.

With Simmons out, Brown can use the big men in the four spot more often, and offer more minutes to the big men. That’s an issue that seems to be more time constraining than getting Simmons on the floor. The Sixers have a four-year contract with Simmons, but the contract with Noel is something that needs to be addressed this summer.

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A downside of this would be that the team is unable to see which big man works best with Ben Simmons, who still will be a leader of the team. Simmons will hopefully be ready to play in mid-January, which means that, as long as the Sixers don’t hold him out, he will be able to play with the big men for a while before the trade deadline.

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As long as Simmons can make it back this season, his injury makes the frontcourt logjam situation a little better. It buys the Sixers time to show off all of their big men to get a potential trade going for one of them, and also offers up some time for the big men to play alongside Simmons.