Ben Simmons Has Stumped One other Coach

To some basketball deviants, Ben Simmons is an limitless fascination. A sphinx, even: actual large, able to killing you if solely he could possibly be bothered, that unconvincing pencil smile. Simmons has stuffed his Nets recreation log with heavy triple singles. Earlier this month, he even approached the esoteric zero-point double-double with a nine-rebound, 13-assist efficiency towards the Celtics. He’ll solely take pictures within the paint however he has developed a baffling allergy to the backboard. He is absolutely one of many quickest 6-foot-10 athletes ever however typically prefers an aimless saunter. Each basketball recreation presents a brand new alternative for Ben to broaden the boundaries of the bizarre.

Simmons is lucky to have landed on a roster that is shooting-rich sufficient to sort-of-accommodate his astonishing unwillingness to place ball in hoop. He is nonetheless lacking a big chunk of an already slim offensive repertoire. However he sprays the ball round in transition, and he and Nic Claxton enable the Nets to change aggressively on protection. In sporadic bursts, he’ll even assault the rim, trying a bit of like 50-year-old Ben Simmons’s driveway impression of rookie Ben Simmons, however nonetheless higher than nothing. Within the second half of the Nets’ recreation towards the Sixers on Wednesday, Simmons took six pictures within the paint and made 5. “He simply made a alternative. He simply made a option to put his head down and be aggressive for our crew and we want him to try this,” mentioned Kyrie Irving afterwards. Like the whole lot else with Simmons, this ardour ebbs and flows. All of it type of works, if not nicely sufficient to justify his contract, then not less than nicely sufficient to warrant a random observer’s perverse consideration within the Nets’ experiment.

We’re free to take pleasure in this thriller from a distance. However the Nets head coach is, tragically, paid to determine him out. Not but three months into the job, Jacque Vaughn has confronted the peccadillos of Ben Simmons head-on and appears a bit drained. The Nets, nonetheless lacking Kevin Durant because of an MCL sprain, have misplaced six of their final eight. Thursday evening’s humiliation by the hands of the conference-worst Pistons appeared to weigh closely on Vaughn in postgame press. Simmons completed with zero factors, one rebound, and 7 assists, and sat out many of the second half with knee soreness. On this absence, Vaughn let his eyes do the talking:

Requested extra usually about Simmons’s availability in back-to-backs, Vaughn barely bothered to code his language:

The objective, in my eyes, I am going to say this, is for everybody to play each recreation, and to do what’s essential to be ready to play each recreation. There’s a specific amount of minutes that every particular person performed in Philly. Some performed equally tonight. The preparation that it takes going into that, you simply have to offer credit score to the fellows who had been ready to play, able to play, did what was essential to get their our bodies able to play.

It isn’t fairly Doc Rivers’s flaccid-faced “I don’t know the answer to that,” however we’ll arrive at that section ultimately.