New York: Every Ben Simmons jump shot travels the same ugly, uncertain journey, the ball tumbling towards the hoop like a satellite that has been thrown off its orbit and is hurtling through space.
To watch the Australian warm up for the Philadelphia 76ers ahead of Game 3 against the Brooklyn Nets at the Barclays Centre in New York was to watch a how-to in what not to do when shooting a basketball: his left elbow rigid and bent to the side like a folding-chair leg, his left hand hooked against the ball, creating that sideways spin that gives Simmons no grace once the ball touches the rim.
His wayward shooting before the game was the subject of a "Missing" poster outside Barclays Centre.
He labours to shoot. Nothing about it appears comfortable or fluid, even when he makes one, and the result he usually gets – a miss – might only reinforce his unwillingness to take a jump shot during a game. To watch him is to understand why he must work on his shot, and why he would be so reluctant to.
But to watch him do just about anything else on a basketball court – to watch him for most of Thursday's game, for example – can make you a witness to so much of what makes the sport beautiful and thrilling.
Take your pick from his marvellous performance: Simmons scored a playoff-career-high 31 points and handed out nine assists to lead the 76ers past the Nets by 131-115 for a 2-1 lead in their eastern conference opening-round play-off series on Thursday night (Friday AEST).
All of it was on a night when the 76ers' centre Joel Embiid had a left knee that was too sore for him to play.
There was Simmons, swooping in from the right wing on a fast break, banking in a soft runner for his second basket, contrasting those stiff-armed jump shots with several smooth, liquid sequences when he was on the move.
There he was, leaping to block a Caris LeVert jump shot and force a Nets shot-clock violation. There he was, gathering and dunking a missed shot by J.J. Redick with one second left in the first half, then staring down the arena full of fans who booed him every time the ball was in his hands.
Replay
That residue from the series' first two games was to be expected, what with Simmons' complaints about the 76ers being booed in the Wells Fargo Centre during their loss in Game 1.
Simmons and Embiid were happy to keep the bad blood flowing during and after Game 2, when Embiid clocked Jarrett Allen with an elbow, then laughed about it later with Simmons.
But the subtlest shot of the series came on Wednesday from Nets veteran Jared Dudley, who told reporters, "Once you slow [Simmons] up in the half-court, I think he's average."
You want to get a young player, even one as gifted as Simmons, off his game? You get him thinking about his softest target and greatest weakness. For Simmons, that's his jump shot. It was a smart gambit by Dudley. But after Simmons shooed away the comments during the 76ers' morning shoot-around on Thursday – "That's coming from Jared Dudley; come on," he said to reporters – the Nets never did force him into those uncomfortable choices. They never did make him pull up or settle for a shot from beyond six or seven feet, let alone 10 or 15.
"The thing that we all make a mistake of – and I do, too – is he's 22 years old," 76ers coach Brett Brown said.
"People, I don't think, think enough about that. The focus on his 15-foot shot, it gets so much attention, and I get why, and I feel it, too. You're always trying to find ways to best place him because, at this stage, that's not really a part of his game. You see in the playoffs that people defend him accordingly."
That defence, generally, takes the same form. The player guarding Simmons gives him a halo of five feet or so, daring him to shoot a jumper, and once Simmons declines the offer and starts to drive, the player's teammates try to wall off Simmons from the basket.
Brown countered that approach with a neat adjustment in Game 2, having Jimmy Butler pick Simmons' man, not when Simmons began to drive, but when Simmons entered the lane, opening space at or above the rim for Simmons to dunk the ball or drop in a lay-up.
Without Embiid, though, Simmons had room to post up, frequently against a smaller defender. Three times in those situations, he scored with his off-hand, his right, and his size and speed on the wing disrupted the Nets' perimeter offence all night.
"You see 6-foot-10, and it's not like a fake 6-10," Brown said. "He's every bit of 6-foot-10. And then you sit him in a stance, and you sort of unwind him, and he sits down and gets long well, he can do that. He's an athlete. He thinks like that. He has the ability to, maybe most dramatically, influence a game in that area, in my opinion. And so when you go to Ben, and somebody asked me about his half-court game, the areas he can control. You can rebound, both sides of the ball, offence, defence, and you can guard."
He did all of those things on Thursday, in a victory that lets the 76ers breathe just a little now, and he didn't even have to relegate himself to the act that so often seems to paralyse him.
Sometime in this post-season, maybe later in this series, a team will force Ben Simmons to shoot another jump shot, and Jared Dudley might seem a prophet then. But not on Thursday night.
Tobias Harris also scored a playoff-career-high 29 points to go along with 16 rebounds, and Redick added 26 points for Philadelphia.
Greg Monroe, who signed late in the regular season, received the emergency start in place of Embiid and contributed nine points and 13 boards.
LeVert and D'Angelo Russell each scored 26 points for the Nets, who played their first home play-off game in four years.
Game four is scheduled for Sunday (5am, AEST) at Brooklyn.
Meanwhile, Australian Andrew Bogut's Warriors steamrolled the Los Angeles Clippers 132-105 in LA to take a 2-1 lead in their series.
The win came after the Warriors gave up an NBA play-off record 31-point lead to the Clippers to lose game two.
Bogut had eight points, five assists and 14 rebounds from 25 minutes on court. Four of his rebounds were on the offensive end.
Bogut, who was playing in the NBL with the Sydney Kings last month, was inserted into the starting line-up after Warriors' All-Star big man DeMarcus Cousins suffered a likely season-ending quad injury in game two.
The veteran was the Warriors' starting centre during his 2012-2016 stint with the team and had an immediate impact scoring four points in the first seven minutes.
Kevin Durant top-scored for the Warriors with 38 points.
Patty Mills' San Antonio Spurs also bounced back from their recent capitulation to beat the Denver Nuggets and take a 2-1 play-off series lead.
The Spurs convincingly won game three in San Antonio on Thursday 118-108, a stark change from Tuesday's game two when they lost after holding a late 19-point lead.
Spurs' guard Derrick White had a career night with 36 points and DeMar Rozan added 25 points.
Mills' effort was not reflected in the box score, with the Australian scoreless in 17 minutes on the court.
The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, Field Level Media, AAP
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