Sixers’ Ben Simmons still confident despite Game 2 dud

Ultimately, Philadelphia dropped the game by five points after leading by 20-plus in the second quarter.

The lead grew to 76-68 on a baseline dunk by Tatum that capped a 50-20 Celtics run. Later it was a little bit of maybe he should of done that after all.

Then after a 5-0 run by Boston, the Sixers scored six straight points on 3-pointers by Redick and Embiid to take an 88-86 lead with 7:42 to play. Ben Simmons is the third double-digit scorer and Dario Saric is grabbing 7.1 rebounds.

The paper went on to call Thursday’s performance the worst game of Simmons’ career. And that’s the issue.

Simmons admitted he knew what was coming his way, and the big question for the remainder of the series would be whether or not he could figure out how to beat it.

Simmons isn’t a complainer, at least publicly.

Game three is set for Saturday, May 5 in Philadelphia.

You can’t un-ring that bell and the message it sent.

He’s now the 21st player since 1964 to play at least 31 minutes in a playoff game and put up just one point.

At times, Simmons didn’t look locked into the contest and during his post-game press conference he admitted he was over-thinking the game.

Simmons was minus-23 against the Celtics Thursday.

If winning this particular game was his first priority, that’s what Brown should have done. This time, they blew a 22-point second-quarter advantage en route to the setback.

At that point, the Sixers were up two, but had been outscored by 16 points with Simmons on the floor.

“I did everything to kind of aggravate it”, Brown said of the first-quarter play.

As if the Celtics needed any more motivation as they head to Philadelphia for Game 3. But Brown was playing the long game and this was a learning experience for one of his young stars.

Game 2 brought up some serious questions, some we weren’t contemplating earlier and some that we still don’t have the answers too. That’s the decision I made.

We’re not comparing McConnell to Simmons, who averaged close to a triple-double during the season. While that pattern would prove beneficial to the Celtics again in this series as they have home court advantage, you’d like to think they’d like to have a little more wiggle room than a victor take all situation like they had with Milwaukee. In fact, Celtics’ forward Marcus Morris dared him to throw-up a left-handed finish.Simmons can still be effective even if he isn’t scoring, but he won’t have a drastic impact on this series until he can find a reliable way to create his own shot. Some batters struggle against certain pitchers, and vice versa. “Obviously his rookie year, I think he’ll be a rookie again next year, sort of like (Ben) Simmons, because of all the injuries”. What they do have is perhaps the best coach of these young National Basketball Association playoffs in Brad Stevens, and a consistency that their opponents in the Philadelphia 76ers sorely lack. Ben’s going to adjust.

“That’s the thing. I’m gonna have bad games”.

It’s also reasonable to assume that Brown, deep down inside, realizes Simmons is stuck, that perhaps he hit the rookie wall.

“I thought we were too sped up on offense”, said Brad Stevens.