Philadelphia 76ers: The return of Ben Simmons’ MIA jump shot

 Ben Simmons has spent the offseason adding a jump shot to his repertoire. Why it’s about time and such good news for the Philadelphia 76ers

Watching the Philadelphia 76ers go seven games against the Toronto Raptors – who also just happen to be my rooting interest in the NBA – in the Eastern Conference Semifinals last season was tense. And throughout, one thing was abundantly clear to me. That group of Philadelphia players was just getting started.

I was on the edge of my seat the whole series because I knew that last season was going to be Toronto’s best chance in franchise history of getting to the NBA Finals. If getting to the Finals meant having to go through Philly, I knew they’d better get it done now because a year or two down the road, the likelihood of winning a seven-game series against Kyle Lowry‘s hometown team would be a lot lower.

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The fact that at the time, Kawhi Leonard‘s future NBA home was still a huge question mark made this consideration even stronger. What was evident though was that trusting “The Process” had ultimately worked out and even bigger, better things were easily within reach for the 76ers.

Fast forward a little less than three months, and a big step toward those bigger things has developed. Ben Simmons apparently has a jump shot.

My husband initially came across and shared with me the Open Run video uploaded on July 30, showing some moments of Ben Simmons’ newfound shooting range. The video is more than 21 minutes long but a helpful commenter has added a list of links to the times where Simmons can be seen taking jumpers. My immediate thought on seeing this was, Well, it’s about freaking time.

Simmons’ lack of any kind of shooting was something we’ve discussed at length as a couple especially having recently seen so much of him in the playoffs.  He was already so good at what he did. Imagining how incredible he’d be with the addition of a jump shot was an exercise that was both fun and frustrating. Fun for obvious reasons but frustrating because seeing the way he moves always made me think that adding a jump shot to his game should be a no-brainer.

That said, I wasn’t surprised at this turn of events. Exiting the playoffs on May 12th was obviously a huge disappointment for Philly, and I absolutely knew that the offseason would see improvement being made in Philly’s key young players like Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid.

Even though Ben Simmons will be entering only his third year playing in the NBA  this fall at the age of 23, (he sat out the first season after he was drafted with a right foot injury) it’s always been a head-scratcher to me that someone hadn’t convinced him before now that his jump shot needed work. Wait, let me rephrase that. Someone should have convinced him that his jump shot needed to exist.

Looking at his shooting stats from his two NBA seasons, it’s borderline shocking to see just how few shots Simmons has attempted from any kind of distance especially considering that basketball-reference.com lists him as a point guard and his NBA player profile lists him as a guard-forward.

So far in his NBA career, 51 percent of his field-goal attempts have come from between 0 and 3 feet from the basket and 33 percent have come from 3 to 10 feet. Once you get out 10 to16 feet and 16 feet to 3-point range, there’s a drastic drop to 13 and .02 percent respectively. From beyond the arc, the .009 percent is hardly worth mentioning.

To put this into perspective, in Simmons’ rookie year, Jonas Valanciunas playing at center for the Toronto Raptors took 1 percent of his shots from deep and hit 40 percent of them. As a point guard, it’s reasonable to expect Ben Simmons’ numbers to be at least that of a center who had literally just added the long-range shot to his game.

Looking at Ben Simmons’ highlights from his senior year of high school it’s easy to understand why back then a jump shot wouldn’t have been high on his priority list. It’s hard to imagine anyone being excited to do anything else if they could get to the rim as easily and had as explosive a first step at that age as Simmons did. I know I would have wanted to dunk all day, every day.

What’s most interesting to me about that video though, is how many jump shots made that highlight compilation. And the shots look every bit as effortless as everything else he does on the court. Amidst numerous dunks, some really impressive handles and some sick passing, in the first 3:30 of that video Simmons can be seen taking five mid to long-range shots and sinking them easily. And what a pretty looking shot it is.

I in no way expected that in researching for this article I would learn that Ben Simmons’ jump shot was not, in fact, nonexistent as I had previously believed but for some reason was simply missing in action. But when did it disappear and why? I had a mystery on my hands.

The next step in my investigation was to look at highlights from his time at LSU. I watched two videos, each five minutes long, of his highlights from 2015 and 2016. (I didn’t include links to those videos because the soundtracks are not general audience-friendly).

Again both were heavily populated with dunks and layups. Again there was excellent passing and ball-handling with the addition of a couple of really impressive blocks the likes of which I didn’t see in his high school highlights. But between the two videos, there were only two jump shots. I’d discovered when Ben Simmons’ jump shot disappeared. Now onto figuring out why.

Okay, in fairness, I’m obviously not the first to realize that Ben Simmons had a decent jump shot once upon a time. Nor am I the first to ask the question, “What happened to Ben Simmons’ jump shot?”

But having enough information to ask the question lead me to an article that was published on May 3, 2019. The article has some more detailed numbers about how many jumpers Simmons took and made in high school compared to in college. His shooting percentages were by no means stellar at 29.4 percent but the article also makes note of the first thing I noticed when watching his high school highlights. It’s a really good-looking shot.

In trying to answer the title question, the article presents the possibility that between high school and college, someone messed with Simmons’ shooting mechanics in a less than productive way. It goes on to quote ESPN’s Jackie MacMullan discussing a conversation she had with Simmons’ high school coach, Kevin Boyle:

"…he (Kevin Boyle) swears to me Ben Simmons could shoot at one time and something changed and somebody changed his mechanics and sent him on this spiral he’s on now, becaue now it’s all mental."

Having seen the footage I’ve now seen, it seems like that’s as reasonable a conclusion as any. Since he clearly was not as naturally gifted at shooting as he was at getting to the rim, suddenly becoming a worse shooter could easily be a reason to refuse to shoot upon entering a bigger pond with bigger fish in his college career.

Fortunately, Simmons does a lot of other things really really well. At 6-foot-10, he’s got size on literally every other guy he’s matching up against at the point guard position not to mention being able to deal with bigger guys when he gets switched on. He can finish through contact in the paint and dunks explosively, effortlessly, and often. He also defensive rebounds well and throws some really impressive passes.

With everything Simmons has going for him, large NBA outlets such as NBA on ESPN have discussed the question of whether he even needs a jump shot to be successful in the league.  On the other hand, NBA legend Kobe Bryant‘s decisive opinion is that he definitely does need a jump shot saying:

"He’s got to get a jump shot. It sounds stupid and all that but I’m dead-[expletive] serious. Because if not, he will regret it when his career is over."

Bryant also said it was “astonishing” that Simmons has become a high-impact player without a jump shot. That assessment in and of itself is a testament to just how good Simmons already is.

My question has been with everything he can already do, why on earth wouldn’t he develop his jump shot? With a mid-range and long-range jumper in his repertoire, he’d become deadly from literally anywhere on the floor.

And realistically in today’s game, it’s a fundamental skill set for someone at his position. When centers are adding a long-range shot to their game and taking them with regularity, as a point guard or point forward, you can’t ignore it indefinitely.

Plus, it has always looked to me like adding a jump shot would not be an overwhelming undertaking for Big Ben. His movement is already fluid and easy. You can’t always teach that and it’s a trait that translates really well into jump shooting.

In the Open Run video, he can be seen taking and making a fading mid-range jumper after having created space from his defender (1:24) and a tough turn around three (5:58). And like so much else he does, he makes it look easy. If this had been the first time I’d ever seen Simmons playing, I would have been floored to learn that this kind of jump shooting was just being added to his game.

In an Open Run highlight video that specifically features Simmons, you can see even more clearly just how much work he’s done and how impressive his newly returning jumper has the potential to be.

I especially like that I’m seeing him take shots that are in motion. Most everything else he does is on the move so it’s perfect that he’s not making just set jumpers. And the shot itself looks great. He’s doing a really good job of getting squared up to the basket before his release which is quick and crisp.

After hearing Kobe Byrant’s comments on his need for a jumper, he acknowledged that this was not new information. He’d heard it before. It’s great to see the maturity he’s showing both in realizing the criticism was constructive and not clapping back and in what was obviously a conscious decision regarding what to work on this offseason.

Deciding what to focus on improving in the offseason can make or break a player’s tenure with a team. DeMar DeRozan is, to me, an example of what can happen when a player chooses not to work on their biggest flaw.

During his nine years in Toronto, DeRozan was always working specifically on some part of his game. And because he’s a gym rat with such a great work ethic, whenever he decided to work on something, it was clearly evident. The problem for me as a fan was that he never decided to work on the part of his game that was the biggest liability, his defense. And we all know how his Toronto story ended.

Of course, we’ll never know for sure but it’s easy to speculate that if DeRozan had filled in some of the defensive holes in his game, maybe the Raptors’ front office wouldn’t have felt that in order to win it all, it was necessary to move on from the most loyal player in franchise history.

It could be that the 76ers loss in the playoffs was what lit the fire under Simmons to focus on developing his shot. Or possibly the powers that be in the Philly front office made clear that a jumper was necessary for him to live up to his end of the five-year, $170 million contract extension he just signed. Or maybe this is simply the result of the fact that he already knew exactly where he had to improve. Either way, this is really good news for Philly.

Jimmy Butler and J.J. Redick‘s departure from the 76ers left a big hole in the team’s ability to score from mid-range and distance that needed to be addressed. But even if those guys had stayed, with the likes of Joel Embiid available to play down low, it’s not ideal to have Simmons be in a position where he needs to get such a large amount of his points in the paint.

With a consistent jump shot, there’s no place on the floor opposing teams will be able to leave this man open. He’s got a quick first step, so they already can’t guard him too close. Moving forward with a reliable jumper, they also won’t be able to give him room. And with his ability to see the floor and make great passes, even if they manage to lock him down, you best believe he’s going to find the open man. If I was a Philadelphia fan, I’d be pretty excited.

Of course, what happens in offseason workouts doesn’t always translate to the regular season so it might be premature to get too worked up. But as a Raptors fan, I can totally understand the excitement when all of a sudden your team is not longer underachieving and one of the best players on your squad it taking this kind of step forward.

While putting together this article Ben Simmons became my favorite NBA player who doesn’t wear a Raptors’ uniform. I’m really looking forward to seeing what he brings next season.