With the other Simmons sitting out, Jonathon Simmons did his best impersonation, putting up a 20/7/5 statline that definitely feels like something Ben Simmons would do. The only problem was, he hit way too many threes. Ben still hasn’t hit one, but Jonathon forgot that fact (probably was remembering all the practice footage we’ve seen of Ben hitting threes) and knocked down a trifecta of triples. This is off the heels of another nice performance where he had 14 and 8.
These games come at a good time for Jonathon Simmons and the Philly phaithful. He has now shown that he can be a valuable playoff contributor (sarcasm? you decide), an attribute I thought he’d lost when he left San Antonio. In fact, his play with the Magic earlier this season made it seem like he’s never be any sort of contributor, playoff or not, ever again. He has rebounded a bit in Philly, but he was still getting tons of DNP’s.
It’s unclear to me whether he’s ever actually been “good” or if it was just an illusion created by Gregg Popovich combined with the fact that he literally made the league as a G-League tryout attendee. But what’s very clear is that this was a “good” game for him, and that’s almost as nice, really.