The Philadelphia 76ers entered Saturday night’s game with the Detroit Pistons on a high note. The team won two in a row at home over the Boston Celtics and were getting set to take on, for all intents and purposes, a bad Pistons team.
They started off slow, but they won the game 114-110 thanks to some big plays by Ben Simmons on defense. His play against Pistons star Jerami Grant was efficient as he led the effort against Grant holding him to 11 points on 3-for-19 shooting. He had come in averaging 25.1 points on the season and he scored 20+ points in 14 straight entering the game.
“I’m just being me,” explained Simmons. “I feel like when I’m locked in and ready to go out there, defensively, it’s tough for anybody to really score on me or take advantage of certain mismatches, but I feel like I’m a dominant defender when I’m locked in and ready to go.”
Simmons is one of the leaders of this team and his defense against Grant and the energy he brought to the floor is a big difference for the rest of the team. They will always follow his lead and that is what it’s going to take to win games moving forward.
“I don’t really care who I’m guarding,” Simmons added. “I just love the challenge of holding guys to less than whatever they’re averaging and just doing my part, because I know if I do that, and Matisse (Thybulle) is doing his thing then Joel (Embiid) doing his thing, it’s hard to score. If we get stops, it leads to easy buckets.”
The Sixers will now have an off day on Sunday before finishing off another two-game series, this one on the road, with the Pistons on Monday.
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