Philadelphia 76ers: So Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons CAN play together

In the lead up to the 2020-21 NBA season, which was longer than most for reasons you know and likely want to move on from, one of the hottest button questions seemingly rose above all others: Could Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons play together for the Philadelphia 76ers?

Now for fans in Philly, this question, which was asked by seemingly every nationally syndicated pundit, beat writer, and blogger alike became white noise rather quickly. Of course, Simmons and Embiid could play together, as they’d been teammates for all but one of their respective on-court professional seasons, but still, for one reason or another, the question just kept coming up, and the generally accepted answer as to what Elton Brand and eventually Daryl Morey should do became rather singular.

Either trade Joel Embiid or trade Ben Simmons; there is no other option.

Golden State fans wanted Simmons and were largely willing to flip the number two pick in the 2020 NBA Draft to get a deal done. Fans in Miami wanted Embiid to reunite the all-world center with his 2018-19 partner in crime, Jimmy Butler. While their fans weren’t particularly keen on flipping Tyler Herro to get a hypothetical deal done, as they love that Wisconsin by way of the University of Kentucky shooting guard more than some Eagles fans like Nick Foles, many were open to flipping some combination of Duncan Robinson, Goran Dragic, the 20th overall pick in the 2020 NBA Draft, and maybe even Bam Adebayo to get a deal done.

Well, as it turns out, the Philadelphia 76ers actually had a third option up their sleeves – keep the duo together under new head coach Doc Rivers – and as it turns out, that was the correct play after all, as both players were just named finalists for the MVP and Defensive Player of the Year award respectively.

How many other teams can state the same? Yeah, that’d be none.

It’s safe to say the Philadelphia 76ers have unlocked a dynamic duo.

More from Section 215

In 2020-21, the Philadelphia 76ers played Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons together for 1,164 minutes over 42 games.

Though that pairing was the ninth-most used utilized two-man lineup of any the team had to offer – largely due to Embiid and Simmons missing 21 and 14 games during the abbreviated season – it still accounted for the highest plus-minus Doc Rivers’ rotation had to offer, with the Sixers scoring 393 more points then they allowed.

That’s… pretty good.

Do you want to know what else is pretty good? The 2.5 average points per minute the Sixers score when Embiid and Simmons are on the court together, which ranks among the best markets on the team too, second actually among pairings with 1,000 or more minutes played together behind only Embiid and Seth Curry.

So, from a statistical standpoint, Embiid and Simmons have been getting things done on both the offensive and defensive end of the court with ease. If their combined numbers were the only thing that were up, one could maybe chalk it up to a pair of players playing like MVP and DPOTY finalists, but fortunately for fans in the 215, the duo haven’t just stepped up their games numerically.

No, in a very welcomed twist of fate, Embiid and Simmons have become an incredibly formidable pairing at either end of the court who have increasingly found ways to fold their respective games into one complementary attack.

From running a two-man game where Simmons can drive to the basket or Embiid can sink back for an open three, to forming an elite inside-out defensive game where one of the best perimeter defenders in the NBA can feed would-be drivers into a one-man block party, the duo has formed an incredible two-way, two-man game unlike any other the NBA has to offer.

Are they perfect? No. The duo still turn the ball over a tad too much for anyone’s taste, and that has to change if the Sixers are going to remain a contender long-term, but when you consider how incompatible Embiid and Simmons looked at times when paired up early in their careers, their newfound offensive and defensive pairing are incredibly welcomed for a team with sky-high aspirations.

Next. For just today, we are all Wizards fans. dark

If either player – or basketball gods willing, both players – can leave the season with one of the league’s premier award, it’ll fully vindicate all of the work the Philadelphia 76ers did to get the duo on their roster, but even if that doesn’t happen, the real award of the 2020-21 NBA season was finding a way to play Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons together effectively, and to his credit, Doc Rivers did just that. While Monty Williams may get all of the credit for transforming the Pheonix Suns into a contender, Austin Rivers’ dad deserves just as many accolades for doing what Brett Brown never could.