Philadelphia 76ers star Ben Simmons had a miserable postseason. He shot 34.2% from the foul line and it affected his aggressiveness to where he was unable to make an impact on the offensive end.
Simmons’ struggles began in the first round against the Washington Wizards: He started 5-for-20 from the line through the first four games. The Wizards began the Hack-a-Ben strategy, forcing him to go to the line. The strategy allowed them to win Game 4 when Joel Embiid went down with an injury.
The Atlanta Hawks continued the hacking strategy and it hurt his confidence even more. He took only four shots in Game 7 as he was did not want to go back to the line.
Wizards star Bradley Beal sat with CBS Sports, and he said the Wizards began exposing Simmons a bit from the line:
Obviously, when Joel (Embiid) got hurt, that was the game that we ended up winning. And we felt like we should have won the next game, but they just wanted it a little bit more than we did. And Joel didn’t even play that game. But at the same time we kind of exposed the move of fouling Ben (Simmons), putting him on the line a few times. Granted, I think in our series he actually made a few. So, we had to go away from that instead of just giving away free points. But they were two totally different series, two totally different teams. Ben was more or less aggressive in our series, the first couple games, and then it kind of died down and trickled down from there. Atlanta was a good team, too. They played hard. They have a lot of young pieces over there who are really versatile. They’re not just a one-dimensional team. It was very tough. Joel had to do a lot.
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The Sixers will have to either continue to work with him and get him back on track or they will have to move him in a deal to get a better fitting All-Star for Embiid.
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
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