After half a decade under head coach Brett Brown and four years and two contracts into the career of star center Joel Embiid—the team’s only All-Star—the Philadelphia 76ers and their fans face a moment of reckoning. It’s a painful one, but it won’t get any less painful if we ignore it. The facts are what they are, and…
Nobody needs it explained to them that it’s relatively normal for a rookie, no matter how talented, to play like ass for an entire series in the second round of his first trip to the playoffs. This is how things are generally supposed to go.
When I look at Philadelphia 76ers guard Ben Simmons, I see a very tall and extremely talented young basketball player with a resting dick face and no jump shot. When Boston Celtics coach Brad Stevens looks at him, he sees a curious foraging bear. For this reason, he is a basketball coaching genius.
It’s not that the Sixers are dumb. They’re not. They are, in fact, quite tough and disciplined. But it is also true that their best players are children, and they are playing a series against one of the very sharpest, most wisely and meticulously coached NBA teams you will ever see. And the consequence of that dynamic…
Ben Simmons was soundly outplayed by wee Terry Rozier in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals. Simmons still had 18 points on 6-of-11 shooting but did not connect on any shot farther than three feet from the rim. Many of his usual pinpoint passes landed in the hands of teammates who collectively shot an arctic…
Red alert: The sniping between Philly’s Ben Simmons and Utah’s Donovan Mitchell over who should be the NBA Rookie of the Year has reached “Custom Hoodie” status.
The 76ers pulled away from a sleepy and defeated Hornets team Sunday afternoon, sans Joel Embiid, behind more excellent two-way play from young Ben Simmons. It was Philly’s 10th straight win, and second straight without Embiid. Sure, the Embiid-less wins have come over Eastern Conference non-playoff teams, but still:…
During a PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds streaming session last night, Sixers rookie Ben Simmons tried to convince Karl-Anthony Towns, who was logging off, to play a round with him.
For true lovers of drama, last night’s game between the Cavaliers and Sixers could not have been timed any better. After a week’s worth of speculation about LeBron James possibly choosing to sign with Philadelphia this summer, the Sixers came into Cleveland and gave The King a pretty enticing preview of how good life…
Dwyane Wade, paying tribute to Parkland shooting victim Joaquin Oliver, hit the game-winning shot last night in the Miami Heat’s 102-101 victory over the Philadelphia 76ers. He scored 15 of Miami’s 17 final points (and assisted on the other bucket). But it was a foul he made that actually won the Heat the game.
The NBA season is currently in the fatty middle of its schedule, and 45 or so games in, it feels as if there’s not a whole lot left to discover. The Pacers are surprisingly good, I guess, and the Thunder are finally on track. The Magic are just as diarrheal as they’ve been for the past half decade. By this point, you…
Ben Simmons and Kyle Lowry were both ejected with less than 10 seconds to go in today’s Raptors-Sixers game. At least on the court, the “incident” looked like a whole lot of nothing, but a little gesture from Simmons as the two went off made it seem like he and Lowry were going to finish their chat in the tunnel.
The Sixers were a trendy pick to make a run at the top half of the Eastern Conference playoff field this season, to such a degree that Sixers fans and Sam Hinkie loyalists were doing preseason touchdown dances about signs of arrival as abstract as the drafting of Markelle Fultz and the extension of the team’s…
What with all the nice fat triple-doubly Ben Simmons and Lonzo Ball lines, you might be wondering what exactly makes an assist. I am. Not because I’m interested in whether home scorers are especially generous to their local stars—both players, it turns out, average more assists per 36 minutes when on the road—but…
Playing without Joel Embiid tonight, Ben Simmons had 19 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists. It was the fourth triple-double of his NBA career.
Ben Simmons dropped 18 points, 9 rebounds, and 10 assists last night and quietly flew under the radar. That is because Joel Embiid is a monstrous gift: His 46 points, 15 rebounds, 7 blocks and 7 assists blacked out the sun. There was a gazelle-like Euro step, a double Dream Shake, and easy pullups from three—anything…
When was the last time we saw a rookie this broadly excellent? Does Ben Simmons evoke anyone besides the most obvious—and most desirable—comparison? Having already submitted a handful of Bronesque stat lines for our consideration, Simmons did it once again in last night’s win over the Hawks: 19 points, 13 rebounds, 9…
Joel Embiid vs. Andre Drummond was always going to be the real plot of the Sixers’ trip to Detroit, and in preparing for it, Embiid watched a lot of game tape and liked what he saw. “Defensively,” Embiid said of Drummond, “he doesn’t play any defense.”
Pretty much every pro athlete in America is getting asked about Donald Trump these days, and though many have had interesting things to say, few have cut to the chase quite like Ben Simmons:
This little Ron Baker lookalike thought he could sneak one by Ben Simmons, but little did he know, the dude is closer to healthy now and he’s also supposedly seven feet tall.