Sixers desperately need Ben Simmons to change their luck | David Murphy
The Sixers have had a lot of misfortune with their lottery picks so far.
THE DAY BEFORE doctors gave him the green light, Ben Simmons spent part of his evening shooting one-handed 5-footers from alternating sides of the hoop. It was getting toward game time, and as the last home crowd of the season shuffled toward its seats, hundreds of pairs of eyes lingered on each of his moves: catch, elevate, release, catch, elevate, release. The drill is simple but hypnotic, its metronomic rhythm ticking silently amid the pregame din.
Catch, elevate, release.
Tick, tick, tick.
By the time the lights dimmed, Simmons had vanished from sight, replaced by the usual procession of journeymen and future role players running onto the court amid a fusillade of pyrotechnics. The Sixers' raucous pregame introductions can sometimes feel like they are taking place in some alternate Wells Fargo Center on the other side of the rainbow. Pay no attention to the man between the portable flame throwers.
(It's Alex Poythress.)
(He's your sixth man.)
The heathens who never trusted The Process will point to stretches like the last couple of weeks as their evidence. Heading into Wednesday night's season finale against the Knicks at Madison Square Garden, the Sixers had lost seven straight games despite brandishing a lineup that would definitely be one of the favorites to win that million-dollar basketball tournament at Philly U. Winston Churchill may have said, "When going through hell, keep on going," but he didn't live in a world where Tiago Splitter and Shawn Long were getting minutes. The Process is four years old now, and where, exactly, has it taken the Sixers as an organization? They've been rebuilding so long they're starting to trade away the guys who they were supposed to be rebuilding around. Constant exposure to the kind of basketball we've seen the last couple of weeks make these kinds of thoughts difficult to deflect.
And yet . . .
It's easy to have faith when nobody's laughing at you. Once upon a time, Noah was just a crazy old man with a dry-docked boat. Then God threw him overboard and hired somebody's son. Or something like that.
The difficult thing about where the Sixers are now is that, for as close as they could be to finally fielding a legitimate Starting Five, it can also feel like they're just as close to being quite far away. The first two Process Picks are gone, the third is again recovering from surgery, and nobody even dares speak the fifth guy's name.
Brett Brown certainly didn't speak it when he reiterated his vision for next seasons's team before Monday's home finale. That's not a news flash - Jahlil Okafor averaged less than 23 minutes in the 50 games he managed to play this season - but the omission was one more reason the promised land still feels so far away.
That feeling is not necessarily reality. We learned a lot about a lot of different components on this roster this year, as individuals, and as collectives. Richaun Holmes will never have Nerlens Noel's athleticism, but his play down the stretch offered every reason to think that he can offer more than enough per-dollar-value as a backup big man given the kind of contract Noel expects to command. T.J. McConnell established himself as a legitimate NBA role player. Brightest of all was the grinder that Dario Saric turned out to be. He needs to improve his jump shot to be anything more than a sixth man on a top-notch team, but we at least know he'll work like hell on it.
"I feel that when you look at our roster . . . we have way more keepers than we've ever had," Brown said. "You get excited about what we think Ben's going to be, Dario's much better than I thought he was going to be, the glimpses that we saw with Embiid, the improvement in (Robert) Covington and Richaun and T.J. Where's the pingpong ball gonna fall? How can you not get excited? We're just in a far better place."
But for role players to matter they need stars to surround, and it's there where we're left to wonder the same things we did last year. That's not Brown's fault, nor is it Bryan Colangelo's. Nor is it Sam Hinkie's. Clearly, Okafor was the wrong pick two Junes ago, but if hindsight is our guide then everybody not employed by the Spurs should be out of a job. ESPN's cameras weren't showing mocking shots of young Sixers fans crying that draft. Okafor has thus far turned out to be what a lot of people suspected he'd be. It just turns out that the guy picked right after him, Kristaps Porzingis, quickly proved the superior option, which wasn't the case with Noel or Embiid or Simmons or Saric.
What the Sixers need most is a little bit of good luck. Where they need it most is with Simmons. Embiid is a potentially transcendental player who will require an asterisk for the foreseeable future. Okafor is a sunk cost. Lonzo Ball and Markelle Fultz figure to be gone by the time the Sixers pick, according to the current odds.
They need Simmons to avoid Embiid's lower-body injuries, and Okafor's immaturity, and Noel's inability to improve his offensive game. The first two of the three might be enough. Until then, it's a familiar summer prescription: wonder and wait.
@ByDavidMurphy