I'll take that scenario. The Hack a Shaq backfires as much as it works. You can't do it in the last two minutes of any quarter, and intentionally fouling someone earlier just gets your team in the penalty that much sooner. (where Dame can live at the line) I will gladly take the 55 wins and his all-star appearance and coach around his free throw deficiencies.....in the event that he does not improve his percentage. Which I think he will.
so you take away his best skill set (as playmaker) and move your 2nd or 3rd best player Nurk out of center position? Doesn’t make sense to me, kid is 23 you make him play his natural position and have him shoot during the regular season. It’s all in his head that can be fixed
All I know is the Sixers sucked til Simmons joined and then they were really good and he led them on a long win streak without Embiid. Last year, Simmons didn’t play and they got swept. Simmons would be a fantastic addition to our team.
I think the optimal thing is to trade Nurk for a center that can spread the floor and trap defensively. Boucher come on down!
His skillset is still useful as a center, as the playmaker off the pick and roll. We have needed that forever with Dame. Plus he can initiate the offense for the bench unit, or for a few possessions a game, but you don't want him doing that with another non-shooter in the game. If it was possible to field a successful half court offense playing two non-shooters, I'm sure a team would have figured it out by now. Maybe the Blazers can be the ones to figure it out, but I'm not holding my breath. In the playoffs where every possession is a half court possession trotting out Nurkic and Simmons at the same time is just shooting yourself in the foot.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who absolutely fails to see why he is (or should be) a center. But he doesn't want to explain things due to "semantics". Or something.
Glad to know we are just making up shit now. Here’s a video of him putting 40 on Gobert, playing as center.
If they played CJ at pg then they would have a guy similar to Young in that he can get hot, not afraid of clutch time, can pass the ball when coached and has a competitiveness and leadership and shoots ft's well , which they don't get from Ben. I think Olshey is more like Morey as he looks at todays game and knows your 1-4 guys better be shooters.
This is the path to maximizing Ben Simmons. And you should do it if you're gonna pay him 31 million dollars a year.
It worked consistently all series for the Hawks to the point where it paralyzed Simmons. It only backfires when it comes to someone shooting around the 50/60% mark, and you give that player so many opportunities that they develop a rhythm and become a 75% shooter. Simmons just recorded the worst FT% in the history of the playoffs, worse than Shaq somehow. And actually, the last 2 minutes of the game are not unaffected by his FT shooting. Ben’s greatest strength on offense is driving and dishing to the open guy. His poor FT shooting means he’s allergic, even scared to touch the ball. So now he’s an off-ball player for those last two minutes where his man can sag off of him by 10 ft. This is TERRIBLE for spacing and not a scenario for Dame to maintain his clutch success. We’ve seen how bogged down Philly becomes in the last 2 minutes because of this. There’s no reason to suggest it’d be any different here. Everyone here assumes it’s just some mental block that Simmons has, and somehow playing with Dame and the right shooting coach will get him past that. That’s a huge gamble, and we have zero evidence that it’s a good gamble. He’s been this player for the past five years. His broken shot will not get fixed with a new scenery.
If they had a CJ in that series Sixers win in 6. Morey don't let age keep him from acquiring a player that can help them for the 2-3 years.
In the last game, he played 36 minutes and had 13 assists, 8 rebounds, and only 2 turnovers. He only went to the line 1 time (1-2) I guess you could make the argument that it paralyzed him because he only took 4 shots from the field? (2-4) But I would take those numbers every game if he was surrounded by good offensive players. He did a great job on Young and Bogdanovic the whole night. And I think a change of scenery can help: "DeAndre Jordan is in the zone. After years of being hacked by opponents to force the 45.5 percent career free-throw shooter to the line, Jordan is shooting a career-best 75.8 percent on free throws during his first season with the Dallas Mavericks"
Ah Kendrick Perkins... 20+ teams will make a pitch for Simmons. Kuzma for Simmons, Lonzo Ball for Simmons... you name it.
This dude needs a change of scenery in the worst way https://www.foxsports.com/stories/n...ason-struggles-philadelphia-76ers-joel-embiid Simmons spent the year rehabbing, and about a year and a half working alongside shooting coach John Townsend. Townsend had been hired by Brown in 2016 to work closely with Simmons, and together the two had made progress. Maybe not as much as some in the organization would have liked, but still, that 70.6 percent mark during the postseason represented a massive step forward. Two days after that 2018 loss to the Celtics, the Sixers held exit meetings in their Camden, N.J., training facility. Each player was given a four-page document containing individualized offseason plans. For Simmons the list of priorities included free-throw shooting, finishing at the rim and developing a jump shot. In that order. After the meetings, Brown told reporters during a press conference that he expected Simmons to spend "intense time" with Townsend over the offseason. Everyone around the team was excited. They felt like a breakthrough had occurred, that Simmons was ready not only to solidify his improvements at the line but also to begin carrying those changes over into his shooting overall. After exit meetings, the players and coaches went their separate ways to recharge. Some time passed and, according to multiple league sources, when Townsend returned to the team’s facility Brown pulled him aside. Change of plans, he said. Simmons’ agent, Rich Paul, and family had decided that he’d be better off working with one of his brothers, Liam, a former low-level Division I guard and assistant coach, who now coaches at D-2 Colorado Christian University. Simmons was a former No. 1 pick, one of the team’s two foundational pieces, a genuine superstar, in talent and branding, in a league where superstars dictate the terms. In other words: Simmons wasn’t required to explain himself to management. That season, Simmons’ free-throw shooting regressed once again, plunging back down to 60 percent, not quite as bad as his rookie-season marks but still a significant drop-off from his playoff rate. He also took just 25 shots outside of 16 feet after attempting 40 as a rookie. At one point during the year, Jim O’Brien, a long time NBA coach and former Sixers assistant who was serving as a special adviser to Brown, posed a question during a coaches meeting. "Name me one area where Ben Simmons has improved," he asked his colleagues. The room fell silent.
Great article. Sounds like Portland (out of the super bright media lights) and with Dame as the focus and the leader might just be the thing for him.