What you’re about to see is a whole playlist of clips where Lebron James is guarding Ben Simmons from the paint. He never made a single step outside of that area when matched up against the young sixer.
And although Philadelphia ran away with the victory, things didn’t go smooth for Simmons.
What up everybody my name is Stefan and this is Heat Check. Let’s get into it.
I guess this is the blessing and the curse of having a player like him as the point guard.
He went 3 for 13 from the field, and that is on uncontested jumpers. I don’t remember any point guard being left with so much space. And Simmons would either miss badly or not even look at the basket at all.
Lebron knew exactly what he was doing with this. He exaggerated all of this to make it obvious so for a player who can’t shot, this is destroying his confidence.
Simmons was so confused that he even got baited into taking a three which of course he missed. But if you’re asking yourself why am I even mentioning this, it’s because this was only the third attempt from behind the arc of the season for Ben.
And look at the other 2: Half court heaves at the end of quarters. Meaning that he really doesn’t feel comfortable taking those shots.
BTW here’s a fun fact. He didn’t hit a three last year as well, so he could very well end up without a three pointer in 2 years playing in the league.
But if you ask the sixers, they will take the bad with all the good that comes with him any day of the week.
Especially now when they got 4 guys around who can shoot. We all know that Simmons will always find guys for the shot. And that’s what happened in this game as well, as he ended up with 7 assists.
Although he didn’t show it against the Lakers, the guy is averaging 9 rebounds per game for the season.
We know how Philadelphia feeds off of his killer pace, especially in transition.
So as I mentioned, now his shooting and scoring isn’t the biggest problem for the team just because for example in this game Joel Embiid had 37 points Tobias Harris had 22 and JJ Reddick ended up with 21 points, all of them shooting above 60%
When you factor in all of this, it’s easy to understand how Ben Simmons can shoot a horrible percentage from the field and Philadelphia still wins by 23.
That’s why I said in my last video that the Sixers are going to be extremely dangerous in the playoffs.
The only thing left to see is if the rest of the Eastern Conference contending teams are going to see this as a recipe of slowing down the motor of the team, and how all of that is going to play out in the postseason.
That’s it for now, if you liked this video, subscribe and hit the notification bell so that you don’t miss my future in depth analysis. Talk to you in the next one. Peace out.