How drastic of a change did you expect to see out of this Sixers team without Embiid on the floor? After suffering an incidental facial contusion the other day, fans earned the right to be a tad concerned about the remainder of the regular season. However, with the way Ben Simmons has expressed his leadership, Philly is a much faster team and has continued to dominate in games they are supposed to dominate in. March was a special month for the Sixers. But, more importantly, lets look at how Ben Simmons fared leading this team without his 7’2” enforcer.
Think about Simmons and who he had around him earlier this year compared to now. In October/ November, if Embiid was not in the lineup, Simmons would be limited to Reddick, a struggling Roco, Dario, and Amir Johnson. Now, with the additions of Belinelli and Ilyasova, this team becomes deeper and more of a perimeter threat to opponents. This also correlates to the Sixers averaging 30.1 assists per game in March including 30+ in their last nine contests.
With Simmons emerging as a leader, it makes the shooters more comfortable on the floor. Yesterday, Belinelli was unconscious from the floor shooting 9/10 with the one miss coming from a lackadaisical buzzer beater attempt with barely any time left on the clock at half. Ilyasova shot 4/7 from downtown as well as J.J Reddick shooting 5/8 from long distance. Embiid’s absence used to call for fan panic. Now, an absent Embiid is synonymous for a distributed scoring load. Yesterday against the Hornets, three Sixer starters scored 20+ while the other two starters (Ilyasova and Covington) had 16 and 17 respectively.
Mind you, Dario was absent last game.
Defensively, this team is astounding. Leading the league with a 99.9 defensive rating for the month of March, the Sixers have been halting teams top scoring options from impactful performances. On March 19th against Charolette, Kemba did indeed score 24, but he did not impact the game enough to get the win. Dwight Howard was held to 10 while MKG was limited to five. Also, both power forwards Marvin Williams and Frank Kaminsky were both stalled to two points each.
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A couple days after that against the Grizzlies, all Sixer starters sat out the entire fourth, and each starter scored at least 13 points. However, the leading scorer of the game was Wayne Selden, who had 18. The only thing that stands out about that performance is the fact that Selden is the teams 12th man. Something that stood out to me the most came against Denver on March 26th, which is the only team we’ve played recently who has a sniff of playoff potential. In that game, Will Barton led the game with 25, but a majority of those points came in the first half where the Sixers were a little disoriented, but then pulled back together for the second half and held Barton to 5 points.
Should the Sixers win out, they have to take down Brooklyn, Detroit, Cleveland, Dallas, Atlanta, and Milwaukee. A few easy match ups and a few playoff teams along the way, but with the way this team has been playing, there’s no doubt that this team will finish with at least 50 wins. The Sixers lead the league in rebounds per game with 47.1, are second in the league with assists per game with 26.7, and sit a half of a game back of third place in the East behind Cleveland.
