Other than Ben Simmons’ lack of a jump shot, one of the louder criticisms of the Philadelphia 76ers is the thought that Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid can’t play and win together. They have come up short in past seasons due to the fact that teams can wall off Simmons from getting to the basket and there is not a lot of space offensively.
With a new lineup and a new floor spot for him, the Sixers believe that Simmons and Embiid have found new chemistry to move forward as a group.
“Just a chemistry, a relationship in finding each other,” said coach Brett Brown. “We’ve strung four practices together and you can see with Ben playing [a] sort of an interior position more than being the primary ball carrier, you can see that big-big relationship.”
What Brown means is that Simmons is now playing the power forward spot in a new lineup that includes Shake Milton becoming the starting point guard. It opens up a lot of things offensively for Philadelphia including focusing on Simmons and Embiid’s relationship from the power forward and center positions.
“Joel would be posted, Ben would play peek-a-boo in the low zone on the other side of the floor,” Brown continued. “He’d come down and trail, we’d throw it to Jo, and Ben would rim run and dunk in and I felt like the partnership, the relationship, the big-big mentality, finding each other was crazily obvious. Something that caught me off guard when you haven’t played basketball in four months.”
Simmons and Embiid worked well when Simmons was the primary ball-handler and the point guard, but at the end of the day, it just would not be enough without the presence of another shooter on the floor. With this new move of having Simmons down low with Embiid, it changes everything for Philadelphia and how they run things and it has the potential to make them more dynamic on that end of the floor.
They will get their first look in a game on July 24 against the Memphis Grizzlies in a scrimmage game. [lawrence-related id=34774,34767,34698]