As the Philadelphia 76ers turn their attention to the offseason, the question becomes how can the Sixers improve and continue their title chase?
The biggest answer is to trade Ben Simmons. The 24-year-old is one of the more talented players in the league, and he has made an All-Star game three times. But there has not been much progression on the offensive end, and, at some point, enough is enough.
Veteran teammate and upcoming free agent Danny Green sat down on his podcast “Inside the Green Room” to discuss Simmons’ offensive impact on the floor:
Off the court with his family things back home, and he doesn’t necessarily discuss it with us in private, but I knew he was going through a lot. He had some things going on during the season. It might have come all at once during this time but you can tell, Ben’s the type of kid, if he’s not encouraged, and he’s not pushed or forced to do it, he’s not the type to take that risk. Obviously, he’s a high IQ guy. You can tell, he gets a lot of assists and pushing the pace and he gets paid to do what he does, because he’s so good at it, but he doesn’t step outside that box because he knows well enough ‘I’m good at this. I don’t need to step out. It’s not like I’m encouraged to do this, or I’m kind of afraid to do this kind to do this’ type of thing.
Coach Doc Rivers has repeatedly said he does not care about Simmons not taking jump shots, but, at some point, he has to be pushed to take them. To Green’s point, he has to step outside his comfort zone to grow as a player.
Green added:
I think they need encouragement and some type of push to do that to not be scared to fail at trying something new because he’s one of those guys ‘I know what I’m good at and I don’t need to do anything else’ and when the things that he’s doing that he’s good at isn’t working as well even though he played defense as well as he could for us and gave us dynamic of assists in the ball, and finding guys and pushing the pace, we did need him to attack the rim and be more aggressive, but he felt like he was not getting his touch right and also the free-throw line, it kind of crept on him mentally to where he wasn’t able to get the rhythm you wanted. … At the same time, he still fought, he showed up, he still played, he still worked hard, he still tried to give us his best chance for us to win with doing what he does with screening, rolling, rebounding, defending, and he did to the highest capability could. Just offensively he wasn’t the Ben Simmons we needed him to be at the time.
Danny Green analyzes Ben Simmons on the offensive end #Sixers pic.twitter.com/ZXYgkpdmx8
— Ky Carlin (@Ky_Carlin) June 28, 2021
Rivers continued to express his belief Simmons would get it together on the offensive end of the floor, but at the end of the day, if they can bring in a guy like Damian Lillard or even D’Angelo Russell, the Sixers would probably be in better shape.
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
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