Philadelphia 76ers: Let Ben Simmons develop on his own time

Build the team around him

Even though not every point guard needs to be a shooter, every team needs to have a shooter, and right now, the Philadelphia 76ers have none. Last year, they had J.J. Reddick and Jimmy Butler, who were perfect at carrying the load and creating spacing on the floor. But after Reddick left for the New Orleans Pelicans and Butler headed to the Miami Heat, the Philadelphia 76ers took a questionable approach at assembling their team.

The 76ers decided to lean into their strength of being a large team, and they got larger. They signed the likes of Al Horford and re-signed Tobias Harris. While these are both fine players, they don’t exactly make the 76ers a more diverse team. Instead, it feels like they were just gearing the team up for an eventual run-in with Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks in the playoffs.

This isn’t a terrible idea in theory, but it definitely led to some struggles throughout the regular season. The lineup forces the 76ers to play a defensive game and really limits them on offense, leaving them virtually helpless if the game speeds up and turns into a shootout. As of now, the team is set up to win the Eastern Conference, but would they match up well with any of the offensive juggernauts in the West?

It’s time for the Sixers to realize who Ben Simmons is. It’s highly unlikely that he’s going to develop into a sharpshooter within the next five years, so they need to be aggressive and get shooters around him. It took LeBron James ten years to develop a reliable jump shot, but that doesn’t mean that his teams were held back.

Being able to effectively get the ball to shooters is the next best thing to being a shooter yourself, and Simmons is one of the best in the league at dishing and distributing. The Sixers would be doing Simmons and themselves a huge disservice if they don’t do everything they can to get some reliable perimeter shooters in the building.