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All the stars got along: this is how Philadelphia found the formula to become a Contender

For years Ambide and Simmons have been looking for a way to flourish together, and this season the pattern seems to have been found: the first jumps a step and becomes an MVP candidate, the second gets a secondary role and the players who join create a perfect hierarchy.

Now the reverse version of Brooklyn is thinking big, but knows there are questions that will only be answered in the playoffs

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• Philadelphia Sixers

• Joel Ambide

Assaf Ravitz

Saturday, February 13, 2021, 12:30 p.m.

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The answer was found to the question of how they should play together.

Ambide and Simmons (Photo: GettyImages, Alex Menendez)

Two weeks ago we focused on the Western lead Utah, which has only gotten more impressive since.

Today it's time to focus on the Eastern leadership.

Like Utah, Philadelphia is impressive enough at the start of the season to seriously raise the question of whether it should be added to the list of senior contenders.

As in the case of the Jazz, the feeling is that something has connected in the current group more successfully than any previous version built around the quality center and chin who have been looking for the winning formula for several years.

And as in the case of Utah, alongside growing optimism there are some question marks that can only be answered in the playoffs.

Philadelphia's balance is 8:18, and first of all it should be made clear that he is even lying.

Doc Rivers' team is one of the teams to suffer a Corona blow during the season, which is reflected in some games in which most of the senior players have not played.

A more accurate measure of the Sixers 'strength will be the balance in the games in which the senior players played: in Joel Ambid's games the balance is 4:17 and in Ben Simmons' games 5:18, other players also record similar balances in their games.

In other words: Had it not been for the Corona strike, Philadelphia would probably have struggled with Utah and the Lakers for the best balance in the league.

Everything that has been happening in Philadelphia in recent years has revolved around Ambide and Simmons, their development, the hierarchy between them and the question of their suitability.

The current success is also based first and foremost on both, but the discussion is more correct to start with what happened around them.

After the extra-large Extra Large Group trial last year, new manager Daryl Murray can register a very quick first success.

He made moves that caused him to lose talent and diversity, to bring in players he felt were suited to play alongside two most effective stars close to the basket.

Seth Kerry and Danny Green are not just three-pointers, they are three-pointers in motion who never stop moving and bothering the defenses.

Along with Tobias Harris, Doc Rivers has three threesome experts in the top five who clear the field for the star duo.

If they are able to develop into a duo that leads teams to the top, this is the ideal environment for that, the best opportunity they have had so far.

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The second brother to the Kerry family home is no less successful this season.

Seth (Photo: GettyImages, Alex Menendez)

One of them does take the opportunity.

Joel Ambide made the leap from a huge talent to a complete superstar, a legitimate candidate for MVP.

It did so thanks to an upgrade in two key areas.

The first is shooting from all ranges far from the basket.

The Cameroonian chin has improved his percentages significantly.

Compared to last season, the field percentage jumped from 47.7 to 54.5, the percentage of three from 33.1 to 38.1 and the percentage of penalties from 80.7 to 84.9.

The biggest jump comes in half-distance shooting: from 40.2 percent last season to 56.6 this year, which is also the highest percentage of 48 players with at least 50 half-distance shots this year.

With the lethal half-distance shooting, Ambide can start post moves farther from the basket and climb to Tim Duncan style shooting, he also likes to attack with his face to the basket and stop at a surprising speed for shooting.

Almost impossible to both make Ambide's shot difficult and prevent him from digging his way into the paint, the new shooting threat takes guards off balance and helps him squeeze offenses from them.

Which leads us to the second upgrade.

Ambide extorts offenses at a historic pace this year and leads the league with 11.4 free throws per game.

The feature that allows him to do this is a rare reaction speed to a player his size.

He exploits every little mistake of the defensive player with a quick movement that makes contact before his guard even realizes what happened.

Thus, any unstable stance, forward forwarding of hands or movement too fast forward in the face of the threat of Ambide’s shot immediately becomes an offense squeeze.

As with the rest of the big offender extortionists it is not a particularly aesthetic basketball, but it makes Ambide almost unstoppable one-on-one.

Response speed is also an underappreciated feature in Ambide protection.

Not only is he superbly placed in color and makes the Sixers a team whose rivals score the lowest percentages below the basket (58.3), he also reads situations at the highest level.

Several times in the game he recognizes what the attack is planning and with the help of a quick movement eliminates the move.

He seems to have especially upgraded the pick n 'roll defense in the mid-range, the ability to stay close to the ball carrier to prevent him from going up for a shot until his keeper overcomes the block and then returns to his player just when he gets the ball.

Another improvement in his game has to do with the ability to avoid offenses, both defensively and offensively, he is more measured and calculated in his movement, which is usually what happens when a huge talent becomes a huge player.

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This is what happens when a huge talent becomes a huge player.

Ambide (Photo: AP, Chris Szagola)

Ben Simmons has not made a similar leap.

His main role in the force is to get his status as number 2 in the Ambide team and as a player who contributes to the game in a great many ways unrelated to accumulating points.

And he does get his new status.

He's not even Philadelphia's secondary scorer, this role belongs to Tobias Harris, but he manages the game, runs passing attacks, runs the scenes, serves as both a blocker and a blocker in Pick n 'Roll and keeps the opposing stars in four different positions.

He fights blockages, makes it difficult for most shots and looks like the ultimate personal guard, alongside a great deal of the ass he provides.

Simmons recently tweeted that he is the best defensive player in the league.

He's a bit exaggerating, it's a title to be earned when neutralizing the best players in the world in the playoffs, but he's definitely evolving to be one of the top stoppers in the NBA.

This tweet also clarifies what Simmons' pride is.

Along with the question marks over their offensive match, it is important to note that Simmons and Ambide are two fine defensive players who work great together and make Philadelphia one of the best defensive teams in the league (currently ranked fourth in defensive efficiency).

In recent games Simmons is also starting to find his offensive role in the new situation.

Since outside shooting is not visible on the horizon, he becomes a post player for everything.

He lowers his guards to the paint with his back to the basket and from there takes advantage of his size and agility to get shots out of the paint.

Simmons is able to finish with both hands and if the defense brings help he knows how to find available players in a very narrow area.

He is the guard who makes the most post moves in the league, and this is a creative and smart way to take advantage of his unique skill set.

Rivers, compared to Brett Brown who was before him, uses a pick n 'roll between Simmons and Ambide, and lately the pick n' roll is done very close to the basket, sometimes right inside the paint, giving Simmons the little space he needs to produce a shot mode for himself or anyone else. .

In the last five games Simmons has scored 17.8 points on 66.1 percent from the field, and if that is the beginning of this trend in a great row for the Sixers.

There is also a very clear division of roles around the two stars.

Seth Kerry got into a dream situation for him and performs a perfect imitation of JJ Reddick, emphasizing the game between his two with Ambide and sometimes Simmons.

Kerry looks like a more complete version of Radick, he knows how to get out of a block and keep moving not only for a half-distance shot but also to get to the ring.

It also retains much better than redik.

The lesser-known brother to the Kerry home currently stands at 50 percent from three and has yet to miss penalties this season, which is happening even though he has fallen ill in Corona and has not fully recovered since.

Danny Green is a veteran fighting fox with two rings in the last two years, he is mostly looking for the threes from the corner that he loves and knows how to move in without a ball at a precise timing when the defense is concentrated in the post moves of Ambide and Simmons.

He too found his place.

Tobias Harris (Photo: GettyImages, Tim Nwachukwu)

Tobias Harris, as mentioned, is the secondary scorer.

He feels great in the new hierarchy and expresses his ability to score from any range.

He is almost always stronger or more agile than his guard.

Counter-intuitively, Doc Rivers does not disperse the minutes of Simmons and Ambide, letting them rest together and leaving Tobias as the main player with the substitutes early in the second and fourth quarters.

Doc has recently settled on a second unit of Shake Milton, Matisse Theble, Furcan Kurkmaz, Tobias and Dwight Howard, this quintet has an excellent net rating of 18.7 in 56 minutes shared.

A large team needs a worthy second unit, and it could be that Rivers has found his.

Milton develops into a scorer and a secondary creator who is based on a pick n roll with Dwight and knows how to take everything the defense gives: a three-pointer from a dribble, a colorway to an effective floater, Halle Hop to Dwight or an outing to one of the scenes.

He can already be talked about as a worthy replacement in a good team.

Dwight himself is another veteran fighting fox who does everything Philadelphia needs from its replacement chin.

Seasoning and Korkmaz fit in nicely in the second five, but the first is very weak on offense and the second on defense, and it is not certain that they will be able to be used consistently in the playoffs.

Mori's squad lacks another effective winger on both sides, and it can be assumed that the active general manager will work to find one.

He has finished contracts that add up to a reasonable amount, The Seasoning and Tyris Maxi as promising youngsters and all his first-round picks except one in 2025.

If he wants to think small he can try to get someone like Terence Ross (Orlando will get tired of this season sometime, right?), He has tools to think even bigger, about someone like Victor Oladipo, for example.

The most intriguing option.

Oladipo (Photo: Reuters)

If Murray wants to think very big, he has already shown that Simmons can also be relevant to the proposals.

Simmons was on the table when Philadelphia was one of the two finalists to bring in James Harden.

We do not know what brought down the offer, there are rumors that the Sixers refused to give Maxi either, but the Brooklyn election collection was probably more than Murray was willing to pay.

The only player that Simmons' trade can be considered for is Bradley Bill, and it would be very interesting if Murray was interested in that possibility.

But in the meantime, he has more and more reasons to let the current squad, with minimal reinforcement, run in the playoffs.

Only in a series against a strong opponent can we examine the cooperation between a chin that works mostly close to the basket and a coordinator who scores only from the point.

It could be that Ambide's new diversity, including a three-point shooting upgrade, will facilitate this collaboration, it could be that the multiplicity of scenes around them will be enough to allow them to work in color together.

Simmons' game management and defense make him a very important player even without scoring.

Perhaps Philadelphia should be thought of as the opposite version of Brooklyn: the offense just needs to be good enough to allow the defensive qualities of the stars to make a difference.

Bottom line, the most important question mark to be answered in the upcoming playoffs is Ambide’s ability to be the leading player in a true championship contender.

So far he has struggled to survive long series, get to Money Time with enough air to be effective and deal defensively with rivals required of him to work outside the paint.

The upgraded marksmanship and accumulated experience can provide him with tools to solve all past problems.

If that happens, Murray will eventually find the right sub-star for him, whether it's Simmons or a player who will come in his place.

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