Ben Simmons’ jumper
The flaw:
Nothing was more flawed on last year’s 76ers team than Ben Simmons’ jump shot.
Yes, I understand, growing up he was bigger, faster, stronger and more athletic than anybody and he had no need to shoot from outside.
But, gee whiz, coming from a basketball family (his dad Dave played for North Carolina in college and professionally for Brett Brown in Australia) you would think someone would have taught him the basics of a proper jump shot.
However, to put it bluntly: He can’t shoot.
The fact that a non-post player cannot make a shot more than five feet from the basket in the NBA of 2019 is a major outlier.
According to SB Nation, in his career Simmons has only attempted 18 percent of his shots more than 10 feet from the basket.
That is acceptable if you are Shaquille O’Neal or ‘lob city’ prime DeAndre Jordan. They are centers and were surrounded by great shooters like J.J. Redick and Kobe Bryant to make up for the fact they were strictly post players.
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Simmons, supposedly, is a guard. In general, guards have the ability to shoot jump shots. … somewhat. Yes, everyone throws up the example of Jason Kidd as a great point guard who was shaky on jumpers.
However, when you look at his stats, Kidd finished his career with a 34.9 shooting percentage from three-point range, which is about the league average. The 76ers would do backflips if Simmons ever achieved that mark, as he enters his third professional season yet to make even one three-pointer.
His lack of range has gotten him into visibly embarrassing situations. Simmons counts LeBron James as one of his idols but when the Lakers faced the Sixers, James had so little respect for Simmons’ outside game he basically just sat under the basket instead of going out to guard him.
It has been gone over constantly, but in the playoffs, the script has been the same. The Sixers face an élite defense (Raptors this year, Celtics year before) where Simmons is blocked going to the basket and he basically is worthless in a halfcourt set.
By the end of the Toronto series, Brett Brown simply gave the ball to Jimmy Butler to run things in crunch time and put Simmons in the ‘dunker’ position in the corner. Basically, Simmons was used as a decoy and his job was to stay out of everyone else’s way.
(Side note: Coincidence or not, Simmons did not sign his long-term extension until after Butler had left for Miami)
Of course, the foul line is more than five feet from the basket, so Simmons is naturally really bad at free throws. Trying to put lipstick on a pig, Brown after the season noted that Simmons did raise his free throw percentage from 56 percent as a rookie to 60 percent. However, he shot just 57.5 percent in the playoffs, when every point counts.
Some of the responsibility for this failure falls on Simmons. His rookie year he did not play at all due to a foot injury but, obviously, was unable to improve his shooting when he literally had almost nothing else to do.
Fixing the flaw:
Simmons is not ignoring the problem, although he does not like to talk about it. He did hire his brother, Liam, a former college coach, to work with him this past year on fundamentals.
Brand has also made it quite clear that he expects Simmons to work with the team’s development staff during the season.
In the summer, there has been some good news on the possibility the 76ers starting point guard might be able to shoot a jump shot.
Tobias Harris reports that when he was in a pickup game with Simmons, he actually had to step out and guard him on three-point attempts because he was shooting them so well. There have also been grainy, edited videos of Simmons actually making jump shots leaked to the Internet.
Of course, fans have been teased before. If you get to a Sixers home game early enough, you can watch Simmons launching, and making, three-point shots. He just does not try them in games.
Verdict: I will believe it when I see it.
Overall
The 2018-19 Philadelphia 76ers were a successful but deeply flawed team.
Its lack of depth, poor defense when Embiid was not in, the lousy management of Embiid’s health (and his diet) plus Simmons’ lack of ability to score when away from the basket all were factors in the Sixers season ending in the second round of the playoffs for the second year in a row.
Give Sixers management, and the players involved, credit for at least publicly attempting to try to correct all the problems that sprouted up during the course of last year.
Verdict: Have the Sixers turned themselves into a flawless diamond, with all cracks and bumps now fixed? If you have the sudden urge to climb up a telephone pole next June, the answer is yes.