Philadelphia 76ers: Be aggressive, be be aggressive

The NBA regular season is a certified slog.

The good teams are good, the bad teams are bad, then the ones in the middle duke it out to see who gets a better spot in the lottery and who gets a first-round out versus one of the aforementioned good teams; a situation made all the more generous by the league’s new buy-in playoff tournament.

Though fans, pundits, and #NBATwitter users alike will quibble over how a team performs in a specific contest – be it good, bad, inspired, or not so much – the outcome of a random, midseason game generally has no real impact on a team’s season as a whole – barring injury, of course.

With that in mind, there’s been an alarming trend in Philadelphia 76ers games of late that has been popping up more and more that could ultimately prove a problem come playoff time: A lack of aggression.

The Philadelphia 76ers shouldn’t attempt to sleepwalk into the playoffs.

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After a long and fruitful residency back at the Wells Fargo Center avec fans, the Philadelphia 76ers have taken their show back on the road for a four-game roadie, and thus far, the results have been mixed.

Theoretically speaking, that shouldn’t be too surprising, as any time a team sits at 1-1 over a particular period of time, there will be some good mixed in with the bad, but this isn’t a black and white example of your typical stinker followed up with a blowout.

No, while it would be easy to point out all of the reasons why the Sixers stank versus the New Orleans Pelicans – poor team defense on Zion Williamson, inefficient outside shooting, and a relatively quiet contest by Joel Embiid – versus why they easily handed the OKC Thunder their 33rd loss of the season – relatively effective team defense, an uncharacteristically good performance by Furkan Korkmaz, and an even better one by Joel Embiid – the biggest difference between the two contests, and occasionally within the same contest, has been the Sixers’ wandering levels of aggression.

Simply put, the Sixers have a tendency to take plays, minutes, and even entire quarters off for little to no rhyme or reason. Maybe it’s due to their top-heavy construction or being a generally better team than most of their weekly challengers, but it’s not particularly common to see the Sixers turn in a “complete” 48 minutes of dominant basketball; not as common as their fellow championship-contending compatriots anyway.

But… why? Why does the team look unbeatable one minute and ordinary the next? Why does Tobias Harris go from crafty, decisive, and dare I say Jimmy Butler-esque to a dribble-heavy forward who can’t seem to pick apart even an average defense? And how about the team’s collection of wing-waiting jump shooters? Why does their efficiency from game to game wax and wane like the lunar cycle?

A lot of that, my friends, falls on the shoulders of three-time All-Star Ben Simmons.

Now to be fair, picking on Simmons for his lack of aggressiveness is relatively low hanging fruit. Some people find particular joy in picking apart the former first overall pick’s game with devilish delight even if some of the nitpicks – not shooting 3s, being a below-average rim defender – aren’t particularly relevant to the Sixers’ success. With that being said, Simmons game has been noticeably missing the confident swagger he cultivated just prior to the All-Star break, and frankly, the Sixers could use a reversal of fates bad.

From his pension for passing out of in-paint looks, to being relegated to a fourth-quarter screener paired up with Harris in end-of-game scenarios without Embiid, Simmons has been looking to put the ball into the hands of others far more often than he’s willing to drive to the hoop for the and one.

I’ve seen it, you’ve seen it, and even Simmons’ coaches/teammates have seen it, as both Embiid and Doc Rivers commented on Simmons’ need to remain aggressive after the team’s 117-93 win over OKC.

They are right.

When Simmons is on, the entire Sixers squad plays a whole lot better. The super-sized point guard is by far the team’s best facilitator, by far the team’s best “on-court quarterback”, and a respectable scorer in his own right, especially now that he’s hitting 61.7 percent of his 5.7 free throws per game. When Simmons took his fate into his own hands versus the Thunder, from purposeful drives to surprise jump shots, it added another dynamic to the Sixers’ offense that OKC just couldn’t match.

If Simmons can fold those elements into his offense with regularity, it’ll only make the team better, both now and in the playoffs.

Next. Buyout market playoff reinforcements aren’t coming. dark

Ultimately, the rest of the regular season shouldn’t mean much to the Philadelphia 76ers. They (probably) won’t be able to unseat the Brooklyn Nets for the top spot in the Eastern Conference and would have to suffer through a serious string of bad luck to fall out of the Eastern Conference’s top-four, but just because these final 25ish games won’t be particularly relevant to the team’s postseason future doesn’t mean they should simply sleepwalk their way to the middle of May. No, much like the Steve Nash in Brooklyn, Doc Rivers would be wise to use these final contests to experiment with lineups and try his darndest to get Ben Simmons back to his pre-All-Star break form, as it could be the spark needed to get this team back to the NBA Finals for the first time since the 2000-01 season.