The Philadelphia 76ers can’t afford to kick their Ben Simmons problem down the road any longer.
The Philadelphia 76ers got off to a red-hot 8-2 start to the season. Though, an 0-5 streak without Joel Embiid in the lineup has almost nuked that hot start to the year for the Sixers. Now, the team is 8-7 and sitting in the 8th slot of the Eastern Conference.
And one of the biggest reasons why they have struggled, aside from missing Embiid, has been their lackluster defense. Through the first month of the season, the Sixers are ranked 26th in defensive rating.
It’s almost as if losing an all-NBA defender and a perennial Defensive Player of the Year candidate is having a negative impact on the team on that end of the floor. It’s clear; the Sixers are starting to miss Ben Simmons. There are multiple areas where that’s beginning to show up.
If you want to know how or what missing Simmons has looked like thus far, look at their defense (it’s fallen from 2nd in the league last season to 26th this year), PACE (the Sixers were 12th last year compared to 30th this season), and how lost the team has looked this season without Joel Embiid in the lineup (the Sixers are 7-2 with Embiid and 1-5 without him).
I’m sure you can find other qualifiers and other excuses that would support that the Sixers don’t miss Simmons as much as we all think, but that simply isn’t true. And the more Philadelphia continues to play this little game with Simmons, failing to gain any traction on getting him back on the floor, the more the Sixers are going to suffer.
It’s not entirely panic time for the Sixers just yet. Embiid will return and almost automatically the Sixers will look 100 percent better. It’s just that the margin for error for this team is so small without Simmons that the organization is going to have to have the conversation to decide whether it’s worth it or not to continue this game with Simmons or not.
If the Sixers are truly going to be contenders this season, they have to trade Simmons. And the sooner they’re able to, the better.