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Tim BontempsESPN
Winston Churchill once said of Russia: “It is an enigma wrapped in a mystery within an enigma.” If there is an NBA equivalent to that quote, it is Ben Simmons, star of the Philadelphia 76ers.
There may be no more confused player in the NBA than Simmons. He has the size and strength of a pivot, but plays with the speed and vision of a point guard. He can run and is able to defend all five positions on the court in a way that, no doubt, no one else in the league can.
However, at the same time, he will not shoot at three points – or often even in intermediate jumps. And for all the things he does to help win, his offensive setting has become an endless source of debate in Philadelphia and beyond – especially playing alongside Sixers center-star Joel Embiid.
Case in point: On Monday night, with Embiid a late scratch due to a back tightness, Simmons played in the center for the Sixers at the Utah Jazz, the team with the best NBA record.
So, what did Simmons do? He had the best game of his career, setting his career record with 42 points, nine rebounds and 12 assists – all without taking a single shot outside the painting area.
Ultimately, Jazz prevailed, beating Sixers 134-123 and taking the 19th victory in their last 20 games.
The story, however, was Simmons playing with the kind of aggression that Sixers fans rarely see.
“I mean, if you put it that way, you probably won’t,” said Simmons with a smile, when asked if he’s ever been so aggressive offensively in his NBA career.
“There are nights when I feel like I’m dominant, but it may not look like a 40-point game. I can have a triple-double and we can win by 20, whatever the case may be in defense. [But] yes, i definitely had to take the break without Joel. “
Simmons is right. His game usually consists of doing things that don’t appear in the box’s score, be it the way he is able to catch the elite scorers of the other teams or prepare his teammates to open three points.
But the reason why Monday’s performance was so telling is that, despite his prodigious physical talents, Simmons rarely imposes his will on the game as he did against Jazz, especially in the first quarter. While Philadelphia reached a 42-35 lead, Simmons finished fourth with 19 points and four assists, and scored or created 12 of Philadelphia’s 16 baskets.
In his first 24 games this season, Simmons scored at least the same amount of points in an entire game three times. On Monday night, he did it in the first 12 minutes – all by facing Jazz pivot Rudy Gobert and, sometimes, scoring well on the league’s best defender.
“We anticipated that, since Joel was scratched, we were trying to create a lineup where Gobert would keep Ben,” said Sixers coach Doc Rivers. “It happened, and the key for us was to stop and take it to Ben and put him on the floor.
“I just felt that no one was going to be with him at all, especially a center. So I thought Ben handled it very well.”
Monday’s defeat was the third successive for Philadelphia, which still remains at the top of the Eastern Conference, thanks to the recent fights from other competitors. But in those three defeats, Simmons slowly seems to be more aggressive offensively. Although that was clearly the case on Monday, he scored 23 points in last Thursday’s loss to the Portland Trail Blazers – his record the previous season – and after that with 18 points in Saturday’s loss to the Phoenix Suns.
He only scored 18 points in a game twice throughout the season before the game against Portland. Now, he did it in three straight.
And, according to Simmons, this trend is not an accident.
“Honestly, I have been working on my mentality, my [game], a lot in the last few weeks, “said Simmons.” I think my mindset … it’s not easy to do that, to change the way you play, or certain things in the game that are natural for certain people.
“I feel like I’m finding out. Obviously, my score has been much higher in the last five, six games. So as long as I can keep doing this, and get stuck and work on my mind [game], I think it is scary. “
Over the past few seasons, there has been endless scrutiny of the Simmons game – like the lack of a ball shot or the times when it disappears in the Philadelphia attack.
As a result, nights like Monday, when Simmons was the best player on the floor, are even more intriguing. Why, if he is able to do this one night, is he unable to do it more regularly? His last coach, Brett Brown, openly begged him to score three points. And he did – about once a month. His new coach, Rivers, did the opposite.
The obvious question, after Monday’s performance – and the absence of Embiid – is whether Simmons can produce like that when playing alongside the league’s top scorer. According to Tobias Harris, Simmons did that performance because the Sixers needed him.
“Ben is a guy, he practically evaluates the game while playing, and you could see it immediately at the beginning of the game: he knew he could get past those guys with his speed. And we started to find different ways to get him involved,” said Harris.
“… I saw him working on some things, and that was getting to the post and using the body down there that is probably not as busy as he is and shooting over them. It’s just an evolution of his game to continue to form game after game and he also had that mentality today.
“He wanted to do everything he could to help us win tonight. And that was it, more than anything.”
For the Sixers to be a champion-level team, they need the version of Simmons that came up against Jazz to be there when he plays alongside Embiid. Before Monday night, however, it was unclear whether Simmons was capable of making this type of presentation.
Now that he has done this, the question shifts to when – or if – he will do it again. So this goes to the NBA’s final puzzle.