The Philadelphia 76ers fell to the Denver Nuggets on Tuesday night in a game where nobody really played well for Philadelphia. They were bad in a lot of areas, but there was one big issue that seemed to be at the forefront and that was Ben Simmons’ offensive struggles.
Simmons has not shot the ball well on this road trip and, outside of the win over the Golden State Warriors, he has not been all that aggressive either. He shot 4-for-7 in Tuesday’s loss to the Nuggets and he did not really get a couple of shots to drop until the team was down by 20. It was just a rough night.
“There’s a lot going on, but it is what it is,” said Simmons. “I gotta get my [expletive] together. We got to get back on track as a team.”
Now, Simmons did miss a game on March 20 due to a knee injury, but that is not an excuse. He shot 1-for-7 in the win over the Los Angeles Lakers and he was not all that aggressive against the Clippers as well.
(function (d, s, n) {
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
js = d.createElement(s);
js.className = n;
js.src = “//player.ex.co/player/d8b9c085-4226-44f1-8495-36ad4e2aa62d”;
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, ‘script’, ‘exco-player’));
“I think he’s healthy,” said coach Doc Rivers. “He’s got to play better. We all have to play better.”
The starting unit, as a whole, did not play all that well and it affected the whole game for them.
“I thought our first group, in particular, offensively, the ball stuck continuously,” said Rivers. “They were there trapping Tobias (Harris), we didn’t get anything out of that. If someone traps you, you should be able to destroy that. We’ve done it all year. We were awful there.”
Harris did agree with his coach that things were not good for that group offensively.
“We were flat all night,” he said. “Up until the fourth quarter, we were able to get on a run there with the unit we had out there but, myself, starters, our energy wasn’t where it needs to be.”
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
[mm-video type=playlist id=01f09kz5ecxq9bp57b player_id=01f1jxkahtwnvzepyp image=https://sixerswire.usatoday.com/wp-content/plugins/mm-video/images/playlist-icon.png]
[lawrence-related id=44140,44132,44129]