Ben Simmons is a very highly touted prospect with one very obvious flaw- his outside shooting. While Simmons performed well in summer league, it did nothing to quell those concerns about his shooting. Still, my main takeaway from summer league actually has nothing to do with Ben Simmons’ jump shot. What caught my eye was Simmons’ struggles finishing around the basket in both Salt Lake and Las Vegas. Simmons, a lefty with an ambidextrous approach, surprisingly only finishes around the basket with his right hand. It’s not even that Simmons finishes poorly with his left hand, it’s that will not even attempt to use it around the basket. He often would get in a position where he would obviously need to use his left and would instead try to awkwardly force up a right handed shot. That’s a problem.
Simmons inability to use his left hand around the basket obviously hurt him in summer league. Simmons regularly drove to the basket and got himself into advantageous positions offensively. It was good to see him be able to create those opportunities and he also did a great job of passing out of those situations. He created a number of assist opportunities for teammates with beautiful passes. However, as teams saw Simmons play more, they began to force to him to score as opposed to pass once he broke down the defense. This is where Simmons’ struggles to finish around the basket hurt him. When defenses took the pass away, Simmons was not able to score efficiently enough to punish the opposition and struggled some as a result. If Simmons could confidently finish around the basket with both hands, he would be able to keep the defense honest. As a result, passing lanes would open back up and defenses would really struggle to defend the young Sixer because he could punish them in so many different ways.
That’s why I think, at least in the short term, Simmons’ inability to finish around is more important than his shooting struggles. In my scouting report of him, I discussed how Simmons could still be an effective player without his jump shot, but that is predicated on his ability to be able to score around the basket. Simmons probably needs the jump shot to be superstar but he needs to worry about filling out his game and becoming an effective player before he worries about stardom. The first step towards becoming an effective NBA player is improving as a finisher so that’s what Simmons should be focusing most of his efforts on, not his outside shooting.
On the bright side of this issue, I don’t think Simmons is as bad at finishing as his summer league performance suggests. He struggled some in college but not enough to suggest it would be a huge problem. The step up in competition combined with a long layoff from competitive basketball probably led Simmons to perform worse than expected in this aspect of his game. Summer league is also an incredibly small sample size as Simmons only played in a handful of games across both leagues. We have to take everything we see with a grain of salt knowing that it might not be indicative of how Simmons will perform in the NBA.
Still, I think given Simmons’ struggles at summer league and the fact that he doesn’t have confidence in his left hand around the basket, Sixers fans should keep an eye on how often and effectively Simmons uses that left hand to finish at the rim. It could be a crucial aspect of his development as a successful NBA player and maybe even help propel him into stardom. Sure it will be important for Simmons to improve his jump shot, but he shouldn’t overlook working on his ability to finish with both hands around the basket.
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