NEW YORK _ Every Ben Simmons jump shot travels the same ugly, uncertain journey, the ball tumbling toward the hoop like a satellite that has been thrown off its orbit and is hurdling through space.
To watch him warm up for Thursday night's Game 3 against the Nets here at the Barclays Center, for a 131-115 76ers victory, was to watch a how-to in what not to do when shooting a basketball _ his left elbow rigid and bent to the side like a folding-chair leg, his left hand hooked against the ball, creating that sideways spin that gives Simmons no grace once the ball touches the rim. He labors to shoot. Nothing about it appears comfortable or fluid, even when he makes one, and the result he usually gets _ a miss _ might only reinforce his unwillingness to take a jump shot during a game. To watch him is to understand why he must work on his shot, and why he would be so reluctant to.
But mercy, to watch him do just about anything else on a basketball court _ to watch him for most of Thursday's game, for example _ can make you a witness to so much of what makes the sport beautiful and thrilling. Take your pick from his marvelous performance: 31 points, nine assists, 11 for 13 from the field, 9 for 11 from the foul line, all of it on a night when Joel Embiid's left knee was too sore for him to play. There was Simmons, swooping in from the right wing on a fast break, banking in a soft runner for his second basket, contrasting those stiff-armed jump shots with several smooth, liquid sequences when he was on the move. There he was, leaping to block a Caris LeVert jump shot and force a Nets shot-clock violation. There he was, gathering and dunking a missed shot by JJ Redick with one second left in the first half, then staring down the arena full of fans who booed him every time the ball was in his hands.
That residue from the series' first two games was to be expected, what with Simmons' complaints about the Sixers' being booed in the Wells Fargo Center during their Game 1 loss. Simmons and Embiid were happy to keep the bad blood flowing during and after Game 2, when Embiid clocked Jarrett Allen with an elbow then laughed about it later with Simmons. But the subtlest shot of the series came Wednesday from Nets veteran Jared Dudley, who told reporters, "Once you slow (Simmons) up in the half-court, I think he's average."
You want to get a young player, even one as gifted as Simmons, off his game? You get him thinking about his softest target and greatest weakness. For Simmons, that's his jump shot. It was a smart gambit by Dudley. But after Simmons shooed away the comments during the Sixers' morning shootaround Thursday _ "That's coming from Jared Dudley; come on," he said to reporters _ the Nets never did force him into those uncomfortable choices. They never did make him pull up or settle for a shot from beyond six or seven feet, let alone 10 or 15.
"The thing that we all make a mistake of _ and I do, too _ is he's 22 years old," Sixers coach Brett Brown said. "People, I don't think, think enough about that. The focus on his 15-foot shot, it gets so much attention, and I get why, and I feel it, too. You're always trying to find ways to best place him because, at this stage, that's not really a part of his game. You see in the playoffs that people defend him accordingly."
That defense, generally, takes the same form: The player guarding Simmons gives him a halo of five feet or so, daring him to shoot a jumper, and once Simmons declines the offer and starts to drive, the player's teammates try to wall off Simmons from the basket. Brown countered that approach with a neat adjustment in Game 2, having Jimmy Butler pick Simmons' man not when Simmons began to drive, but when Simmons entered the lane, opening space at or above the rim for Simmons to dunk the ball or drop in a layup. Without Embiid, though, Simmons had room to post up, frequently against a smaller defender. Three times in those situations, he scored with his off-hand, his right, and his size and speed on the wing disrupted the Nets' perimeter offense all night.
"You see 6-foot-10, and it's not like a fake 6-10," Brown said. "He's every bit of 6-foot-10. And then you sit him in a stance, and you sort of unwind him, and he sits down and gets long � well, he can do that. He's an athlete. He thinks like that. He has the ability to, maybe most dramatically, influence a game in that area, in my opinion. And so when you go to Ben, and somebody asked me about his half-court game, the areas he can control. You can rebound, both sides of the ball, offense, defense, and you can guard."
He did all of those things Thursday, in a victory that lets the Sixers breathe just a little now, and he didn't even have to relegate himself to the act that so often seems to paralyze him. Sometime in this postseason, maybe later in this series, a team will force Ben Simmons to shoot another jump shot, and Jared Dudley might seem a prophet then. But not Thursday night.
