Not a coincidence that Doc’s arrival resulted in a dip in Ben’s efficiency this year. Everything that resulted in Tobias’s ascent hurt Ben imo. Tobias going off the bounce more, posting up more, shooting 3s off the catch less. He’s been efficient individually, but it’s to the detriment of Ben and thus the Sixers offense as a whole.

The recipe always should’ve been Simmons, three shooters, and Embiid. But Doc just doesn’t want to play Simmons like that. Not to quote Ben Detrick for the second time in two posts, but:

“ There is an inclination to blame Simmons’ dimmed brilliance on contemporized euphemisms about wanting it more—a crisis of “confidence” or a deficiency of “aggressiveness”—but he is not a quixotic riddle. If you clear the lane and give Simmons the ball, he will play like a superstar. Use him as a screener and traditional post player a la Brandon Bass or Big Baby Davis, and he will not. Sixers’ executive Daryl Morey has suggested on several occasions that the team could deploy Simmons as a heliotropic point-center, which hints at why he acquired deadly spot-up shooters like Curry, Green, and George Hill. “There’s a chance to play really unique, uptempo, sort of spacing, shooting lineups ,” Morey said after last November’s draft. For whatever reason, they have not.”

So now, since Doc seemed disinterested in playing this way, there’s really no reason to keep Simmons. They should prob just deal him. Then, when a new team maximizes his unique skill set, the Sixers fans rabid that he’s the fault will realize “oh, maybe we should’ve used him differently.”