What a total mess of a situation this has turned out to be. If you would've told me at the start of the season that the Sixers would be one of the most dominant teams in the NBA but lose in the second round after dropping three home games to the 4 seeded Atlanta Hawks... I would've said you're smoking something. As bad as Ben Simmons was this series, I will say that I think Doc Rivers was just as bad. However, I'll bash Doc in another article. This one is dedicated to our starting PG who is such an offensive liability that he has to come off the floor in crunch time.
I feel like I've been bamboozled with this whole Ben Simmons situation. Coming into last season, we saw all of these videos of Ben in the gym working on his shot and boy did his stroke look GOOD. I really felt like he was putting the work in to make serious changes to his game. All I could think about was how much it would benefit the Sixers by having such a dynamic passer who could also keep teams honest with his jump shot. As the season started and ended with the bubble, we never saw that jump shot.
Granted, it was a short offseason, but with much of the country in quarantine I was assuming all Ben would be doing is hanging in the gym and working on his shot to come into this season looking slightly more like the videos we were seeing from him playing pickup from the prior offseason. Well, I was wrong again! There was no sight of Ben's jumper this season either. Fast forward to the playoffs, his shooting ability was MIA and that is not an exaggeration. He couldn't make layups, jumpers, or free-throws. This got so bad that he actually just stopped shooting. Imagine that, a player on a HUNDRED MILLION DOLLAR CONTRACT NOT ABLE TO PUT THE BALL IN THE BASKET. Anyways, Ben proved to be a huge liability on the offensive end and cost the Sixers so many points in key moments of the series.
There are now reports that Ben is foregoing playing with the Australian national team in the Olympics to work on "skill development". Other rumors say that the Sixers are going to try to get him to shoot with his other hand as people have been questioning for the past few years whether his left hand is actually his dominant hand or not.
I really am not sure where we go from here with Ben. I have supported him throughout his time in Philly as I could look past his lack of shooting skills to see everything else he brought to the table. This postseason however, showed that his current skillset is not good enough come playoff time. Personally, I think we need to part ways. I am not sure of after this postseason how many GMs will be willing to take a chance on him after seeing him perform this series. We know Damian Lillard wants out of Portland. I would love to see a deal get done there, but I am not sure how much more we would need to give up. I do imagine it would have to be a lot though.
Overall, there are a ton of question marks surrounding Ben's future in Philly. Comment below what you think will happen with him this summer!
