Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons aren’t the perfect pairing, but they’re better than what most teams could ever dream of having. Still, something is missing in Philadelphia. Even worse, it’s hard to pin down which of their issues is the most pressing. I asked executives and agents what Philly’s single biggest issue is, and the answers were all over the place: Simmons’s unwillingness to shoot, Embiid’s durability, the lack of a perimeter shot creator, the absence of high-volume shooters, the shallow bench, team chemistry, and on it went.
The Sixers are 24-14, which amounts to a 52-win pace, and are tied for the ninth-best net rating in the NBA. It’s not like Joel and Ben have accomplished nothing together. But Philly has constantly tweaked its core to try to make Embiid-Simmons work—from the Markelle Fultz failure, to Jimmy Butler’s arrival and departure, to the supporting cast today, featuring Al Horford, Josh Richardson, and Tobias Harris. Yet the Sixers are amid another season when promising signs are dampened by rocky moments. Are the Sixers just finding out that the Embiid-Simmons core has too many deal-breakers?
General manager Elton Brand’s first stab at a fix has been scoping the market for more shooters. Embiid is an average shooter and Simmons is a nonshooter. The team’s offense excels with just one of them but gets clunky with them both, so finding players who can space the floor is critical. The Sixers have expressed interest in a long list of wings, including Malik Beasley (Nuggets), Glenn Robinson III (Warriors), Davis Bertans (Wizards), E’Twaun Moore (Pelicans), and Andre Iguodala (Grizzlies), according to multiple league sources. Most interestingly, sources say the Sixers inquired about Robert Covington, whom they dealt to the Timberwolves in 2018 in the Butler trade. I reported last month that Covington is available, and that is still the case. But Minnesota could have so many bidders for Covington that the price will be too high for Philadelphia to make a reunion a reality.
The Sixers have limited assets to include in any trade. Second-year wing Zhaire Smith is the young player they’re most willing to part with, which should come as no surprise since he is struggling to score efficiently in the G League. Opposing teams would prefer to acquire stellar defensive rookie Matisse Thybulle, but league sources say the Sixers would be (understandably) reluctant to deal him. As for draft picks, the Sixers own all of their firsts from 2021 and beyond, plus two high seconds in 2020 courtesy of the Hawks and Knicks. They’ll also receive Oklahoma City’s protected 2020 first if it falls outside the top 20; most likely, they’ll end up with the Thunder’s seconds in 2022 and 2023.
Philly probably doesn’t have enough to really move the needle without putting one of its own key players on the block, which means meaningful solutions may have to come from within. Head coach Brett Brown is trying to make changes. In December, he publicly challenged Simmons to attempt at least one 3-pointer per game after he had made two corner 3s earlier in the season. But Simmons hasn’t taken one since. Recently, Brown admitted that he “failed” in his quest to get Simmons to shoot 3s.
It’s a shame that Simmons’s career has become consumed by his ambivalence toward shooting. He is one of the game’s most thrilling and unique players—6-foot-10 with all-world defensive ability, passing vision, and athleticism. But he needs to shoot 3s and space the floor to be more valuable than Jahlil Okafor when the ball isn’t in his hands.
Plenty of players with shaky jumpers have found success—as long as they’re willing to shoot. Draymond Green shoots like he’s wearing a backpack, but he connected on just enough attempts to keep defenses honest during Golden State’s five Finals runs. Giannis Antetokounmpo and Blake Griffin shot enough bricks to build skyscrapers, but have developed to a point where they now draw a defense’s attention. Brown just wants Simmons to commit to take enough attempts in order to do the same.
The other key difference between bigs like Green or Griffin and Simmons is that they can handle the ball and regularly find value as a screener in the pick-and-roll. Not Simmons, who has finished only 31 possessions as a pick-and-roll screener in his career, per Synergy. To put that into perspective, Frank Kaminsky has logged 32 this season alone. Simmons should roll more, and lately Brown has revised the Sixers’ game plan to use him that way. It’s about time.
Simmons set an average of 11 on-ball screens in the past four games, per my count from viewing each game. In early November, he was also setting a large number of screens. Besides those two separate stretches, he could go weeks without setting a single on-ball screen. It’s too bad the sample size is so small, because when Simmons is rolling hard to the rim he can pass like Draymond and finish like Griffin.
The Sixers aren’t built to play this way, though. Simmons would be at his best on a fast-paced team that runs a ton of pick-and-roll, but Philadelphia doesn’t do that; besides Butler, it has lacked a perimeter shot creator to run those pick-and-rolls with any regularity. Most recently, Simmons has found success with Richardson as the ball handler, but the play could be neutralized in a playoff setting. Richardson is a versatile and unselfish two-way wing who can be used in myriad ways, but he isn’t an isolation-scoring threat who can make defenses pay with a pull-up 3, a drive to the rim, or a nifty pass. Last season, Richardson plateaued as a go-to scorer and hasn’t made any strides yet this season.
The clip above is a good example of how playoff defenses will approach a Simmons screen. Oklahoma City switches, and then Philadelphia screens again with Embiid, but Richardson can’t beat Steven Adams off the bounce. At no point do the Sixers seek out Simmons on the post because he isn’t a threatening post scorer even against smaller players. The Pacers comfortably used Malcolm Brogdon on Simmons, just as the Spurs did DeMar DeRozan and the Thunder did Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. So much focus is on Simmons’s lack of a jumper that his inefficiencies from the interior get overlooked; he’s scored 0.78 points per post-up since entering the NBA, which ranks in the 22nd percentile in that time frame, per Synergy. Simmons is predictable because he typically tries to go to his right hand for a jump hook or a floater, or defaults to a low-efficiency left-handed fadeaway. Adding new power moves and improving his left hand could help.
The Sixers don’t have a true creator or a screener who can worry defenses. Simmons is a tremendous open-floor playmaker, but what the Sixers need is an orchestrator. Embiid is at his best near the rim. Richardson hasn’t made the leap they needed. Harris is a solid, versatile scorer, but he lacks go-to scoring skills. Trey Burke is a nice spark-plug scorer but not a first option (and he’d get relentlessly attacked on defense). Nobody is equipped to fill Butler’s shoes or realize the vision the Sixers once had for Fultz.
Here’s an idea: Philadelphia should go for Chris Paul. Sure, Paul is 34, but don’t swipe left just because of his age. Even in his 14th season, Paul is still one of the NBA’s best pick-and-roll passers and a lethal fourth-quarter scorer. I’ve been impressed by his willingness to sacrifice next to James Harden in Houston and share the ball in Oklahoma City, which he’d also need to do with the Sixers. A Paul-to-Philadelphia trade could work with the salary of Harris or Horford plus one player. Could some combination of Smith, Thybulle, and picks be enough of a sweetener? CP3 is making an annual average of $41.4 million through the 2021-22 season and has a worrisome track record for getting hurt in the playoffs. Small point guards aren’t built to last. But in Philadelphia, Paul would be surrounded by giants. The Bucks aren’t unbeatable, and every other team in the East has its own flaws, so there’s an open window for the Sixers to make a Finals run if they take a calculated risk this season; Paul could be the answer to opening the floor for both Simmons and Embiid.
But would the Thunder actually do it? They have a good thing going right now, and trading Paul could screw that up. They’re also already sitting on a mountain of future first-round picks after the Russell Westbrook and Paul George trades, and the financial savings in any deal with the Sixers would be limited. Horford will receive $69 million guaranteed over the next three seasons and Harris will make $147.3 million over the next four seasons. One front office source told me that he believes Horford and Harris aren’t any more tradable than CP3; if teams don’t want to take on Horford or Harris, it would be tough for the Sixers to cobble together the salaries to make a deal work for any of the fantasy trade targets like Paul or Kyle Lowry or Jrue Holiday.
Putting Richardson in a trade could make a deal more palatable to another team because he’s so productive, only 26, and making just $10.9 million next season before he can hit free agency in 2021. It could also be a proactive move for the Sixers, since re-signing him in 2021 would send them soaring deep into the luxury tax; if they’re going to pay the tax, it would make more sense to do so with a playmaker on the payroll. But Richardson isn’t the problem now, and unless Smith or James Ennis III or some other player they’d acquire magically develops the ability to shoot, trading him would deplete their depth at wing.
Trading Horford would come with risks, too. The Sixers signed the former Celtics center to serve as a backup when Embiid is out, and he’s filled that role. The Sixers got roasted in past regular seasons and in the playoffs when Embiid was off the floor; this season, they outscore teams by six points per 100 possessions with Embiid on the bench and Horford on the floor. But Horford has also looked his age at times, especially moving with heavy feet on defense. Horford, 33, is the best backup center in the NBA, but should even the best backup center receive $27 million a year? Horford would have more value on offense to a team that could feature him more, and that won’t happen in Philadelphia. The Sixers would be better off with another guard or wing and a cheaper center.
Unless the Sixers do something surprising before the deadline, the odds are they’ll have to rely on what they have; Philadelphia’s success on offense may still end up coming down to Embiid on the post—how efficiently he can score against single coverage, how he passes when pressured, and how his teammates produce off those passes. Post-centric offenses are rare these days, but Embiid has become dominant during the regular season. He’s a beast who can face up or overpower opponents; in the past three seasons, he has drawn more fouls from the post than any other player in the NBA.
Joel Embiid Postup Scoring Efficiency
But Embiid’s success hasn’t yet translated to the postseason; he was neutralized by Horford in 2017-18 and by Marc Gasol in 2018-19. Maybe he’ll have better success against a Horford-less Boston squad, Bam Adebayo on Miami, and Giannis or Brook Lopez in Milwaukee. “We just got to look at ourselves and see what we can do individually. We’ve got to help each other even if it means being outside of your comfort zone for the greater [good] to help the team win. Meaning that, if you’ve got to space and shoot it, you’ve got to do it,” Embiid recently said, taking a veiled shot at Simmons’s unwillingness to even spot up from beyond the arc. But Embiid may want to look in the mirror when talking about playing outside of one’s comfort zone.
If Simmons eventually spots up from the corner, Embiid will need to do more than just post up. He’s 7-foot, but thus far in his career is an inefficient and unwilling roller—he’s scored an average 1.19 points per roll to the rim on only 107 total opportunities, which equates to one every three games of his career, per Synergy. That’s not all Embiid’s fault—a perimeter shot creator would make him a greater threat on the roll. But even with Butler, he preferred to pop for 3s more often than bigs like Karl-Anthony Towns and Kristaps Porzingis, both of whom are far more effective shooters. Not to mention that Embiid has long had conditioning issues. Simmons has flaws, but Embiid still has work to do to reach his own potential.
There’s a lot in play here. The Sixers will need Simmons and Embiid to play at peak levels to overcome the lack of a ball handler, their teammates to shoot the hell out of the ball, and their defense to play well consistently. If the Embiid-Simmons core fails, the Sixers might find that breaking them up is the best solution.
The idea of dealing Simmons usually comes up first for Trade Machine aficionados. This week, TrueHoop’s David Thorpe suggested Simmons for D’Angelo Russell and Golden State’s first-round pick. It didn’t go over well with Sixers fans, but the rough construct makes some sense, whether the perimeter creator going to Philly is another costly player like CJ McCollum or a cheaper player like Gilgeous-Alexander. The main dilemma with trading Simmons is it would mean putting all your superstar eggs in the Embiid basket. Embiid has suffered injuries throughout his career, from scary major ones (a stress fracture in his back, a broken navicular bone in his right foot, and a torn meniscus in his left knee) to more fluky injuries (an orbital fracture of his left eye and, most recently, a dislocated left ring finger that will keep him out for at least one game). Simmons is like superstar insurance; if Embiid were to ever suffer a catastrophic injury, the Sixers would have Simmons to build around.
If one of the two had to be dealt, building around Simmons could make more sense. He’s one of the league’s best defenders and an intuitive playmaker who can produce in the half court if he buys into being a roll man. If Simmons were put into a Giannis-like role, things would be a bit different. Giannis is a Shaq-like finisher, while Simmons is right-hand dominant and lacks the same aggression when attacking the rim. But Simmons would be more focused on playmaking than Giannis, which could still lead to promising results as long as he was paired with another perimeter shot creator. We’re about to get a taste of what Simmons would look like in a world without Embiid, since the big man could miss time with his finger injury. The Sixers have scored an excellent 112.3 points per 100 possessions with a Simmons-Horford frontcourt, per NBA Advanced Stats; if that trend continues, then conversations about Embiid’s place next to Simmons could get quite interesting. Finding an acceptable trade isn’t easy, though. It’s one thing to decide to blow it up, but it’s another to find a trade that makes sense.
If things go sour in the playoffs, executives and agents around the league say that the first big change would be to the coaching staff. Before team president Bryan Colangelo resigned in 2018, there were rumblings across the NBA that he planned to fire Brown and that his preferred replacement was Villanova head coach Jay Wright. Brown stuck around and Brand was hired as general manager, but last year’s locker room didn’t have the best relationship with Brown, multiple league sources said at the time. From the outside, it doesn’t seem like Brown is reaching his team this season, either, considering the inconsistent defensive effort and shaky offensive system. But ownership has supported Brown through the Process and two front-office regime changes. It’s not all his fault anyway. He is coaching imperfect rosters with star players whose skills clash. Building a high-level offense with Embiid and Simmons isn’t as simple as running James Harden through endless pick-and-rolls or feeding 3s to Steph Curry. He’s also dealt with circumstances totally out of his control, like Sam Hinkie being pushed out or Colangelo being connected to burner accounts that criticized his team. Or just imagine how different things would be if Fultz hadn’t forgotten how to shoot—he projected as the perfect partner for Simmons. It’s also a young team without much leadership that’s dealt with huge expectations. Embiid can be mopey and Simmons isn’t a vocal leader, both of which contribute to the team feeling every bump along the way in the regular season. Brown deserves some blame for a lack of imagination on offense and a failure to hold his players accountable for not doing the things they need to do to win—such as Simmons shooting 3s—but there’s no one person or decision that can be blamed.
Whatever success the Sixers have achieved this season has come with a host of baggage. It probably isn’t going anywhere, either. If they accomplish something special in the playoffs, it’ll be in spite of their undeniable fundamental flaws. There’s no doubt that Embiid and Simmons aren’t the most compatible partners, but for now, they need each other for the Sixers to win a championship.