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1. He's an incredible ballhandler/passer for his size. Incredible. No one his size better at these things since Bron. Buttery smooth with the rock.
2. He's already been blamed for being *too much* of a passer-- in early games, he'd rather pass to the open man than barrel into the paint to look for the clutch shot. Not that this is a good or bad thing... but just like people accused Bron for years of wanting to be more of a Magic than an MJ, Simmons is being accused of the same-- of being "too unselfish."
3. He's absolutely capable of taking a game over when he wants. He hasn't done it yet in a whole game at LSU from what I've seen, but you can see it for stretches-- and the second half of the UNF game was the Simmons Show. It was the first time a lot of people started to realize that there's a reason he's the consensus #1 by a lot. Granted, that was UNF... but in SEC play, there are a few teams he'll need to drop 30-40 against in order for them to compete, and I expect we'll see him do so more than once.
4. He's, at this early point in his career, not a very good jump shooter. Teams are already sagging off of him and daring him to take long 2s or 3s. His release isn't broken by any means, so there's reason to believe that he can at least get it to the point where teams will have to respect it... but I imagine that, with his handles as strong as they are for his size and his ability to finish at the cup as strong as it is, teams will likely do this to Simmons for most of his career.
5. He's currently on a team full of "bums," saddling the blame for the present deficiencies of the coaching and/or the roster (mostly the coaching imo, the potential is there on the roster). So he's already got that going for him, which is nice. Hooray media storylines!
He's not as fast or strong as LeBron was at this age (though that's not really a knock on him), nor does he have nearly LeBron's presence on defense at the moment. But there really isn't a better player to compare him to-- he's going to try to be the Diet Coke version of LeBron, which should still be plenty good enough to be an All-Star.
I can't imagine a team will try to take the ball out of his hands and make him a more prototypical wing/stretch 4 guy. You put the ball in his hands and let him go to work/create work for others. My movies: http://russellhainline.com
My movie reviews: https://letterboxd.com/RussellHFilm/
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