After signing with the Sixers during the last week of June, sharpshooter Ryan Broekhoff has yet to report to the NBA’s campus at Walt Disney World. In a Twitter statement on Sunday, Broekhoff explained the delay.
“I am not with the 76ers right now in Orlando because my wife who is high risk tested positive for COVID,” he wrote. “We have a young son and my focus needs to be with my family at this time. I appreciate the 76ers for their support.”
As the team waits to see whether Broekhoff will be able to report to Orlando, here’s more on the Sixers:
- Speaking to reporters on Monday, 76ers head coach Brett Brown said he has been playing Ben Simmons “exclusively” at power forward during the first few Florida practices and has been impressed by what he has seen. “He’s so dynamic,” Brown said, per Tim Bontemps of ESPN. “Let’s just talk about running. There’s nobody faster in the NBA. So to always have the ball and dribble it up against five guys … to do that dilutes some of his potent weapons. So, watching him fly up the floor, watching him and Joel (Embiid) play off each other, has been a really good look. I think they’ve been fantastic together.” As Bontemps notes, if Brown intends to play Simmons at the four, it would likely mean having Shake Milton in the starting five, with Al Horford coming off the bench.
- Sixers forward Glenn Robinson III is experiencing some upper back discomfort and received treatment today, but was still able to participate fully in practice, writes Keith Pompey of The Philadelphia Inquirer. The club doesn’t consider it a serious issue, Pompey adds.
- In case you missed it, we also rounded up a series of Sixers-related notes on Saturday.
It only took them 3 years to figure out Ben Simmons is not a PG.
76ers. 1983 and counting.
So Simmons read my post (or Brown’s public declaration) and decided not to cost his coach his job. For now.
This news changes things with me. Bucks, Raptors, and now Sixers. I think it’s up to who draws who now.
Brett knows his job could hinge on his willingness to actually coach Simmons, or continue to let him have his way. They have an unconventional dynamic in that they have known each other practically all of Ben’s life, with Brown coaching Simmons’ dad in Australia. Basically, it’s like countless sons tuning their dad out when he tries to coach/train him, so the dad hands him over to someone else saying, “He doesn’t listen to me… Im just dad.”
Brett, for the sake of his job, has no choice but to try to put his foot down with him and make the kid accept him and his coaching, and moving him to PF if the first step in saying, “We’re doing this MY way.” Besides, Simmons will still get to handle the ball in transition off his own def rebounds. But, good move for Brett. Now, if Embiid will buy in too, they can get somewhere!
If not…
I can tell you where they’re going AND where they’ve been. A place alongside the other league dregs
Were BOS has been for the last 34 years!