Official 76ers thread

[tjforce]

Originally Posted by gomiamigo

Ben Simmons is sooo passive!

'How passive is he?'

Ben is so passive, he's dominated the past 3 wins over the Nets and been the best player on the court for 2 of them!

Originally Posted by BlueXtreme

He dominated that last game? No. Embiid did. Simmons did his thing, but Embiid took over and won them that game.. So why is everyone hyping up Simmons?

Thoughts from one of the bigger Simmons fans/collectors here:

Is he passive? Sometimes.
In game 1 he definitely was. Much of this offense runs through Embiid, for better or for worse. Then you have Butler, Harris and Redick who all score.

Simmons shouldn't be a ball hog and shoot 30 times a game they way a guy like Donovan Mitchell does, simply because he has more weapons around him. But there are times when he does need to shoot more than the 12 times a game he averages for his career, mostly when the other guys aren't getting it done.

And that's exactly what he did in games 2 and 3, which he did dominate. Game 4 was kind of a betweener, where he started off passive and then picked it up in the second half (after Butler got kicked out). He even took a shot to try to go ahead in the final minute; nothing passive about that.

It almost reminds me of LeBron's first season in Miami, where there was question about who was running the offense, Wade or LeBron. It cost them the NBA Finals. The next season was when LeBron acknowledged that it was his team and took it to Boston in Game 6 of the ECF. After that, the rest of the guys followed.

Simmons will have to get to the point eventually, when his skill set allows him to. Right now, Embiid is the most effective offensive player on the court for Philly. But I don't think Philly can build a dynasty of the back of Embiid, simply for the fact that I don't think Embiid will ever a guy you can count on to play over 3 quarters of the season.

Will he? That's yet to be determined. But games 2 and 3, along with his last minute of game 4 at least shows that he's willing to take on more of the burden when it counts.

He's far from perfect, but I can't think of that many 22 year olds that have the same post season resume that he's built, even if it isn't that impressive yet.