The Philadelphia 76ers almost blew it, but they were able to come away with a 107-106 win over the Los Angeles Lakers thanks to a late game-winner by Tobias Harris. However, there were a lot of players that contributed to getting to that moment.
One of them was Ben Simmons who finished with another triple-double of 17 points, 11 rebounds, and 10 assists. He was all over the floor again making sure the Sixers were in the right position to pull out the win and his defense was, once again, stellar.
“He was huge,” beamed coach Doc Rivers. “The numbers will say the offense, but the defense and all the other little things he did was unbelievable. He’s playing great.”
The Thing about Simmons is that he does this every night, but on the nights he has a low scoring game, everybody is going to nitpick at that part of his game.
“It’s funny, on his low scoring nights, you look at the game film and he’s flying all over the place,” Rivers said of Simmons. “The stuff he does for us. The winning things he does, it’s hard to put into numbers and unfortunately, we’re in this numbers generation where everything’s numbers, and his brilliance sometimes is missed by a lot of people.”
Simmons took on the challenge of having to defend LeBron James while also having to defend Anthony Davis and Dennis Schroder. The fact that he can defend so many different positions and easily switch on to somebody else makes that more impressive and it is important to notice that stuff even on the nights when he isn’t having a big offensive game.
“I go out there and guard, typically, the best guy on the floor every night or somebody who’s gonna have a big impact in the game,” said Simmons. “I take pride in that. I’m not trying to go out and win awards, I personally take pride in going out and stopping guys and making it tough on them every night.”
Philadelphia will have big offensive games. The talent that they possess will allow them to do so, but in order to be a great team, they will need to bring it on the defensive end of the floor every night.
“It’s a big part of the game,” Simmons finished. “They say defense wins championships so that’s what I’m trying to do.”
The Sixers will have another challenge on the road when they face the Minnesota Timberwolves on Friday.
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
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