Last season, three rookies stood out from the crowd – Ben Simmons, Jayson Tatum and Donovan Mitchell. For all three, however, the start of the season was not quite as triumphant, especially in the team. NBA editor Ole Frerks examines the causes and circumstances in his column.
A lot was to be heard in the past season from “historical” rookies, who (almost) never did anything seen before and, especially in two cases, could already have been All-Stars. During the season the hype concentrated on Ben Simmons and Donovan Mitchell, at the latest in the playoffs Jayson Tatum made the trio perfect.
The three were rookies (Simmons not by any definition, but by the most important one), who not only played good numbers, but also proved their class in the playoffs – three potentially formative faces of the league in the future, three players who clearly exceeded expectations. Three superstars, more likely tomorrow than the day after.
Now the next strong vintage is already at the start and also Luka Doncic, Trae Young and Deandre Ayton have long tried the number bingo to emphasize their uniqueness as it is done in NBA circles (“The first left-hander with the number 14, who recorded 4 assists, three offensive rebounds and a Dunk! Historical!”). But this is not about the new ones.
Instead, it’s about last year’s trio, the contrast between expectations and reality, and the point at which big hype provokes an equally big backlash that almost every young player reaches (or, Karl Towns?) at some point. In short: How do the three best rookies of the previous season beat each other as Sophomores?
It starts with the rookie of the year, as befits his status. Especially since the “problems” of Simmons make it quite clear that in the NBA every player, even the best ones, is still influenced by his circumstances or by his fellow players. If you look at Simmons’ previous statistics, you could easily say that he has changed for the worse:
But it’s not that easy. It is noticeable that the Sixers currently play more successfully in the minutes without Simmons (net rating: +5.2) than with him (-4.4). Especially without Joel Embiid: In the 10 minutes per game that Simmons stands on the court without the dominant center, the Sixers are scored with -14.1 points per 100 ball possession. This is worrying, but can also be explained somewhat.
Philly had also last season for a long time big problems to produce a credible Offense without Embiid. It was only in this magical phase at the end of the season, when Philly won 17 games in a row without Embiid, and Simmons apparently made the leap from super rookie to superstar, that they did it really well. One of the reasons was that Philly wasn’t able to hire Marco Belinelli and Ersan Ilyasova, two urgently needed veteran shooters, too long before that.
The work of the two has been a little glorified ever since; they weren’t the perfect players they were made into in retrospect, but they fulfilled a need and, most importantly, complemented a bank that had barely earned its name until then. The defense was by no means improved by them, as Boston relentlessly pointed out in the Conference Semifinals, but the theory of having many shooters to muster the ingenious Passer Simmons was logically the right one.
It was not a mistake per se not to keep these two veterans in the summer – the mistake was rather not to replace them in the summer equally or higher. Wilson Chandler has been hurt a lot so far, which can be said about almost every year of his career. Mike Muscala is theoretically a good floor spacer, in reality he doesn’t hit much at the moment. Zhaire Smith is hurt and not a shooter. Nemanja Bjelica stood at the floor, but then went to Sacramento. Philly had a shooting problem.
Especially since this was reinforced by the change in the Starting Five: J.J. Redick was one of the best shooters in NBA history and Markelle Fultz was another non-shooter next to Simmons. Until the recent Dario Saric and Robert Covington trade for Jimmy Butler, RoCo was even Philly’s only floor spacer in a Starting Five, which last year formed the league’s best Heavy Minutes lineup with Redick instead of Fultz. The result was a net rating of -1.4 for these starting five, which was now officially buried by the trade.
It would be a bit too easy to pin all the problems down to Fultz, and the logic of building the 2017 No.1 pick for the long-term perspective was at least understandable – but for now this exchange clearly weakened Philly. The Sixers didn’t have enough room, in the half field the teams were able to jump on Embiid with two or three defenders. The statics were completely shifted.
Since there was far too little movement around his post-ups, the Sixers were very easy to calculate offensively, even if, let me say, nobody can defend Embiid. For Simmons, on the other hand, this currently only applies in Transition, with unsorted Defense, against which he can play off his LeBron-like combination of speed, athletics and overview.
In the semi-field, on the other hand, Simmons can sometimes be compared to Rajon Rondo a few years ago, before he acquired an at least rudimentarily respectable distance throw. Simmons can and must also be blamed for this: In summer he talked about having worked a lot on his litter, but this is hardly visible so far.
The free-throw rate has improved slightly, after all. But Simmons still refuses almost every litter, even more than last year: Simmons takes 85 percent of his litters from less than 3 meters from the basket (17/18: 78 percent), he has not yet tried a threesome. Probably rightly: Of the 22 litters he has taken from “further outside” so far, he has hit three. Hallelujah. No wonder most defenders sink meters away from him.
Especially since it is more difficult to punish this if only one dangerous shooter has to be guarded away from the ball. With one or two below average shooters you can achieve a lot, even in this day and age. But not with four, two of which are hardly defended at all. Butler isn’t a floor spacer either, even though he can throw – a natural fit next to Simmons and Embiid isn’t one of the toughest swings in the league.
It speaks for Simmons’ versatility and class in all other respects that he can still put together another impressive statistics package. But for players with such talent, it’s quicker to get to a point where statistics aren’t enough – you want to see the development, especially since the Australian himself has already talked about wanting to become MVP.
A large part of the problems of the Sixers mentioned here will be fixed if the lineups can be found a bit more and maybe one or the other move is made as in the last season. The buyout market is apparently open a little earlier this season (see Tyson Chandler).
A certain improvement has already been seen over the last few games. Now Brett Brown has to make another change to his Starting Five, not just because of Butler. A lineup of Simmons, Redick, Butler, Chandler (if fit) and Embiid, for example, could look even more fearsome than last season’s Starting Five.
Perhaps the highest pressure is still on Simmons. It’s apparent to every viewer that this 22-year-old has mastered almost everything that can be mastered on the court, even defensively he has at least all-defense potential. At the same time, however, the one major weakness is at least as obvious.
Nobody expects Simmons to take five threes per game tomorrow, but some progress has to be made – this expectation comes when you’ve shown the potential to be one of the five or ten best players in the world. However, if Simmons believes he has already reached this goal, he will not reach it.
And then the experiment with the new Big Three in Philly is doomed to failure. The fact that Butler doesn’t necessarily have to be squeamish with young players who, in his opinion, aren’t doing everything they can to unleash their potential is another aspect that makes the Sixers season even more interesting from now on.
Page 1: Ben Simmons before the Trade for Jimmy Butler
Page 2: The start of Jayson Tatum’s season
Page 3: Donovan Mitchell and the problems of Jazz