December 29, 2024
Bill Streicher/Imagn Images
Has Ben Simmons found new life in recent weeks for the Brooklyn Nets?
The Sixers' six-game road swing continues this week, with four more games on tap -- three of them taking place on the West Coast -- before the team's infamous "Disney on Ice" trip concludes. The exciting reality: all of these games are very winnable for the Sixers, who will definitely be favored at least twice and probably have the odds on their side three times.
As we do before every week of Sixers basketball, let's preview the slate ahead:
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The rebuilding Blazers do not do a whole lot well relative to other NBA teams, one of the byproducts of having such a young roster (Portland's entire roster is between the ages of 20 and 29, aside from our old friend, the 30-year-old Jerami Grant). But Portland has more than enough athleticism and shot-making threats who can get hot on the perimeter to win on any given night, highlighted by an upset victory over the Denver Nuggets last week.
Grant always has the potential to score in bunches, but so do younger guards Anfernee Simons, Shaedon Sharpe and Scoot Henderson, the latter of which has struggled since entering the NBA but had one of the better games of his career and knocked down a game-winning jumper in a Blazers win on Thursday:
SCOOT HENDERSON HITS THE GAME WINNER 🤯 pic.twitter.com/F2Bx2iR0YJ
— NBA TV (@NBATV) December 27, 2024
Another player to watch on Portland's roster is Toumani Camara, a tall and long second-year wing who has helped Portland become one of the better offensive rebounding teams in the NBA. They are aggressive on the offensive glass, which the Sixers will have to be cognizant of when they force misses.
Portland grades out as having one of the worst offenses and defenses in the NBA, but their upside on a night-to-night basis is high enough to give teams fits. The Sixers will not be able to sleepwalk to a win.
Sacramento has had a hellish season to date, and they sent shockwaves through the NBA on Friday afternoon, firing successful head coach Mike Brown amid a five-game losing streak which was capped off by a disastrous late-game collapse on the Kings' home floor. Taking over for Brown on an interim basis will be Doug Christie.
The biggest issue which has plagued the Kings this season, surprisingly, has been winning close games. All-Star point guard De'Aaron Fox has long been one of the best clutch shot-makers in the NBA, and the Kings added late-game assassin DeMar DeRozan to their ranks over the summer as well. At the time of Brown's firing, Sacramento's 13 clutch time losses led the NBA.
All the while, Sacramento has been quite good in the aggregate offensively, ranking in the top 10 in Offensive Rating among NBA teams while settling into the middle of the pack as an overall defense -- also a major win considering the personnel Brown was working with.
But things move quickly in the NBA, and clearly Kings management and ownership felt that Brown was responsible for several instances of brutal end-of-game execution. Rumors regarding Fox's frustration are swirling as well -- the 27-year-old has spent his entire career in Sacramento to date, but could his tenure with the Kings be coming to an end soon?
Of course, any team's game-plan against Golden State starts and ends with Stephen Curry, the greatest shooter the sport has ever seen. Kelly Oubre Jr., who spent one year as Curry's teammate with the Warriors, figures to draw that assignment for much of the game, but Curry is surely going to see plenty of different looks, including frequent double-teams and helpers.
Curry's mere presence offers so much space for his teammates, and one beneficiary of that is a player who also traditionally has that impact on floor spacing: another old friend, Buddy Hield. Hield has cooled off since an absurdly efficient beginning to his tenure with the Warriors, but is still one of the best three-point shooters of all time and must be accounted for at all times.
However, whether or not Joel Embiid will play in this game is unclear. The Sixers play Sacramento and Golden State on back-to-back nights, and Embiid has not played in both legs of any back-to-backs all season. It is also not obvious whether the Sixers will move forward more strategically when selecting which of two games within a back-to-back Embiid will play in or if he will just play in the first game of each one. Right now, Golden State is a better team than Sacramento, but they also do not have any interior threats nearly as impactful as Kings All-Star center Domantas Sabonis. A decent case could be made for Embiid playing in either game.
Warriors head coach Steve Kerr is also working on integrating veteran point guard Dennis Schröder into the mix, as Golden State made a trade to acquire the 31-year-old from the Brooklyn Nets during one of the best seasons of his decade-plus-long career.
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The trade of Schröder has opened the door for two former Sixers to see an uptick in opportunity -- and so far, both have made the most of it.
Since the trade, Ben Simmons is averaging 9.8 points and 8.6 assists over a five-game stretch -- while this is hardly an otherworldly stretch, it is far better than the 5.1 points and 5.6 rebounds Simmons averaged during his first 19 games in 2024-25. He seemed to be a complete non-threat to score, and now he at least looks theoretically capable of getting to the rim and finishing inside.
Meanwhile, perhaps the more significant emergence has belonged to Shake Milton, who signed a minuscule three-year deal as part of a sign-and-trade to help facilitate the Mikal Bridges deal between Brooklyn and the New York Knicks. On Thursday, in only his second-most significant outburst against a team coached by Doc Rivers, Milton swung a close game into a Nets win over the Milwaukee Bucks by scoring 20 points on 10 field goal attempts, including an eruption in the fourth quarter:
shake 'em up, shake 'em up, shake 'em up, shake 'em! https://t.co/hOdAECjeq5 pic.twitter.com/3F98NL18P0
— Brooklyn Nets (@BrooklynNets) December 27, 2024
Milton's brilliant showing earned him his first start as a Net on Friday, and in addition to scoring 16 points on just nine shot attempts, Milton notched 12 assists, the second-highest total of his NBA career.
Milton has always been able to shoot and handle the ball with some passing chops mixed in. Players with his skillset who stand at 6-foot-5 with a 7-foot wingspan simply do not grow on trees.
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