Sixers open with best eastern title odds next year

[celticsclay]

I thought after Moranis was humbled by Simmons getting exposed that he’d change his tune on how good he is. I guess not.

exposed?  He had 1 bad game.  It was an all time epically bad game, but Simmons was just fine in the other 4 games against Boston (17.8 ppg on 51% shooting) and had an incredibly good series against Miami (18.2/10.6/9/2.4).

Simmons had a bad series including the second lowest offensive rating at 92 among the Sixer rotation in the series but for Covington. Covington couldn't hit the side of a barn door with a 38.6 TS%  that would have been in the bottom 7% during the NBA's regular season. 

Most notable were was Simmons 26.8% turnover rate which would have been in the bottom 3% during the NBA's regular season and his 1.33 assist to turnover ratio which is brutal for a primary ballhandler. By reference, Smart had a 2.0 ratio during the regular season and he's one of most turnover prone ballhandlers in the NBA. Simmons TS% was below average too.

The Sixers were outscored by 15 in the series led by his team worst -63. He didn't do that in one game either as he had the worst +/- among Sixer starters in 3 of their 5 games and 2nd worst in the other 2. Plus/minus is an iffy stat, but not with results this consistent. Simmons was thoroughly outplayed by Tatum, a true rookie, during the series, by Rozier as our primary ballhandler, and arguably by Smart, a backup ballhandler.

Worse yet, he was exposed. Put a human wall up in front of him and he's no longer special. Secondly, his sloppy ballhandling was heavily responsible for the Sixers choking repeatedly at the end of games, a trend noticeable during the regular season when the Sixers were the worst among playoff teams in close games. IOW, not only can the kid not shoot beyond 10 feet, but his playmaking and judgment leave a lot to be desired.

(A) He also had the 2nd best DRTG on his team (Tatum had the worst DRTG among the regular rotation on the Celtics). 

(B) Simmons TOV% was 25.8 and his AST% was 28.6 so about a 1.108 ratio (the last 3 games he had 4 turnovers in each game, it wasn't like he was cracking double digits here).  Tatum's ratio was only 1.161 (against the Cavs Tatum was 0.778 so god awful).  Horford's was worse than Simmons at 1.106.  Simmons as a primary ball handler (and a rookie no less) turned the ball over a lot.  Not surprising (I mean even the best player in the world had a 17.2 TOV% against Boston in the playoffs). 

(C)Simmons, even with his 0-4 game, 1-2 from the line game, was 4th on the Sixers in TS% in the series.  You take out that game and his TS% was 55.3% or right inline with his season average of 55.7%. 

(D) He obviously had a terrible +/-, but he had a terrible +/- against Boston in the regular season also.  Boston just isn't a very good matchup for him.  It doesn't mean he was exposed or played awful or any such nonsense.  It just means he has a bad matchup (I would argue it is because of the speed of the Boston PG's).  Against the much slower Dragic in the Miami series he played incredibly well with very strong +/- numbers.

(A) Simmons offensive rating was 15.5 points worse than his team’s and his defensive rating was 1.6 better than his team’s. IOW, he was far worse than the rest of his team offensively while he was pretty much in line with the rest of his team defensively. Tatum was much more in line with his team’s performance on both sides of the ball than was Simmons.

(B) Rozier was the Cs primary ball handler and his ratio was 3.25 compared to Simmons 1.108 ratio. More to the other main point I was making, shooting is not Simmons only issue. Simmons’ TO% during the season was in the bottom 10% of the NBA. During our series, he was even worse turning it over at a rate of greater than once every 4 possessions which would have been in the bottom 3% of the NBA during the season.

(C) Given that Simmons takes 46% shots within 3 feet and 79% of his shots within 10 feet, that’s not an impressive TS%. If you compare his total shooting% to a center, he’d be in the bottom third among NBA centers. Worse yet is that you can limit his access to that range defensively without screwing up the rest of your defense because Simmons is the primary ballhandler. While I did not raise this point earlier, Simmons’ need to be near the hoop to score isn’t going to mesh well with having both Embiid and Lebron, nor will his need to be the primary ball handler to be effective when Lebron is a far better option offensively.

(D)"If we're going to do anything of any significance, we're always going to have to go through the Boston Celtics." - Brett Brown

~~~
In any case, my point was that his lack of shooting range was exploited by the Celtics as well as his shooting from outside 10 feet. Additionally, his sloppy ball handling hurt the Sixers in their 3 close losses and that was maybe the Sixers biggest failing as a team. Get the Sixers in tight games with Simmons and they are a below average team, not a contender As I noted before the first game in response to  a prediction of a 5-6 game series loss by LarBrd33:

There's a foul smell in here. Sixers choke in tight games.

Cs in 7.

I was wrong about how competitive the Sixers were going to be, but getting Brown back helped there.

again how was he exposed?  That was all true during the regular season against the Celtics, especially.  Nothing new was learned in that series about Simmons.

Simmons had 7 of 81 games during the season where his +/-  was minus-11 or worse of which one was against the Cs.

In 4 of the 5 playoff games against the Cs, he was minus-11 or worse. Sixers were -63 when he was on the court and +48 when he was on the bench. That’s a 111 point swing. On a national stage. Game after game the Cs gave the NBA a blueprint.

You can do a search on "Celtics exposed Simmons" and get pages of links too if you'd like to ignore your fellow CBloggers' opinions, but I'm done beating a horse so dead that it has turned into glue.

I actually had this exact argument with him during the series and posted all the national media articles talking about it. I'll keep the tps coming for using such good data to crush this argument

[Erik]

In my eyes, Ben Simmons will never live up to the hype. I don't see him shooting well, ever, and every year the league is valuing outside shooting more and more. He doesn't play great defense like Marcus Smart to balance his offensive problems. He'll eventually fade away like Michael Carter Williams and all the other non 3pt shooting PGs.

And yet sadly he will be named Rookie of the year, just like phonies like Westbrook get named MVP when LeBron is the actual MVP every year and Tatum is the better rookie.

[celticsclay]

Just to update this 76ers odds have plummeted all the way from 7-2 to 20-1 following their whiffs on Lebron and George. We are second best odds at 4-1.