As the Philadelphia 76ers prepared to host the Washington Wizards on Saturday looking to put a halt to a three-game losing skid, coach Brett Brown was asked how Ben Simmons could best help against the zone defense that teams have recently thrown at them.
After all, the best way to beat a zone is to shoot out of it and bust it up in order to get them back to a man-to-man defensive scheme. Simmons is a terrific player who can do many things, but shooting is obviously not one of them. So as Brown sat and pondered the question, he came up with an interesting role for him.
“Where I think Ben can have his greatest impact hurting a zone is being a live footed, relentless, committed offensive rebounder,” he said pregame. “I think that area of Ben Simmons’ game where he can feature on scout tapes like (Kenneth) Faried used to like ‘you better box him out’. I see Ben so athletic and elusive, that to me is where he can have his greatest impact in our zone offense.”
Simmons responded by grabbing four offensive rebounds, eight rebounds in total, to go along with 14 points and 11 assists as the Sixers knocked off Washington 125-108 in a win they really needed.
“I thought he was really good,” said Brown. “I thought that he, as a ‘go’ guy, was far more committed than he has been. He’s been pretty good, but I thought he was excellent tonight.”
It’s hard to really accept Simmons as just an offensive rebounder in a zone offense, but due to his lack of shooting this has to be his role. He’ll just have to be a leader in that area when teams move into a zone to face the Sixers. That is where he can make his biggest impact in that type of situation.
“I thought that he had live legs and a committed effort to go get stuff and I thought that as a team, we ended up with 16, so we did a really good job on the offensive boards,” Brown finished with.
Philadelphia will now head to the Motor City on Monday to take on the struggling Detroit Pistons. It would be helpful to get another win under their belt before the big Christmas Day matchup with the Milwaukee Bucks. [lawrence-related id=21858,21844,21846]