It was nearly three months in the making but when Ben Simmons returned to the court in Tuesday’s win over the Utah Jazz, it took him less than four seconds to make an impact.
Lonnie Walker IV pounced on a misdirected inbounds pass from Kris Dunn and immediately handed the ball off to Simmons, who showed no hesitation as he pushed the pace and found Royce O’Neal for a quick 3-pointer.
Simmons raised his right arm in the air and did the same less than a minute later when he swatted a rebound back to Cam Thomas, who also immediately drained another deep bucket.
Simmons was feeling it and so were his teammates. This was a confident Ben Simmons, like the one who in the pre-season told Marc J. Spears of Andscape that he was ready to “dominate people” again.
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“I would definitely say that his confidence and just the entire aura surrounding him [is different],” Erik Slater, a reporter for Clutch Points and host of Bleav in Nets podcast, told foxsports.com.au ahead of this season.
And there was a different aura to the way Simmons played on Tuesday, starting from the moment he entered the game in the first place.
“I told them as soon as we checked in. Like, they know what time it is,” Simmons said in his post-game press conference, where the Australian was also asked about that O’Neal 3-pointer.
Although the reporter didn’t even get the chance to finish his question, mentioning the fast-break opportunity Simmons had created in the space of four seconds to which the three-time All-Star interjected.
“It’s always a fastbreak when I have the ball,” Simmons said, laughing.
Former NBA player Chandler Parsons took exception to both of those quotes, describing them as “ridiculous” and “arrogant”.
“He played very good last night… but when you come back and say things like this, what are you doing?” Parsons said on FanDuel TV’s ‘Run It Back’.
“You’re one game back, your team won, let’s not give us anything bad to talk about. You looked good, you almost had a triple-double. But the quotes are ridiculous, they’re arrogant.”
But are they that ridiculous?
A look at Simmons’ performance against the Jazz on Tuesday, where he flirted with a triple-double after putting up 10 points, eight rebounds and 11 assists in just 18 minutes, suggests there may be more truth to what he said than some people may be giving him credit for.
Starting with the fact that it is a fastbreak opportunity nearly every time Simmons touches the ball.
Don’t believe him? The numbers, as reported by Slater, speak for themselves.
The Nets ranked 26th in fastbreak points (12.0 per game) during their 5-17 stretch over the past 22 games. With Simmons back on Tuesday, the Nets surpassed that with 13 fastbreak points in the first quarter alone.
Even looking at Brooklyn’s offence before Simmons’ injury, again they were averaging a league-leading 22.8 fastbreak points.
That took a tumble when Simmons was sidelined for 38 games with what was later revealed to be a nerve impingement on the lower left side of his back.
It forced the Nets to operate more in the halfcourt, something which they improved on as the season progressed but the offence was still very much a work in progress.
“It’s two different teams,” coach Jacque Vaughn said earlier in the season.
“We were top six in transition with Ben, bottom five without Ben. Better executing in the half-court without Ben, not with Ben. So it’s two different teams.”
With Simmons, the points came much easier and the Nets had a clear offensive identity, scoring 147 points against the Jazz as seven other players hit double figures.
“I think it’s all the little things he does, especially on offence pushing the ball, getting guys in position, finding us and knocking down shots for him,” O’Neale told reporters post-game.
“And then defensively he’s guarding multiple positions, rebounding and then being one of the directors on our team.
“He’s a natural at what he does. He reads the game and he tells us look for the passes because we know he’s going to pass the ball and find us when we’re open.”
That is a point that coach Vaughn reiterated too after Tuesday’s win. The fact that Simmons is going to find a teammate — any teammate — if they are open.
And that helps keep even all of Brooklyn’s players in some kind of a rhythm on the offensive end, always alert and ready to get the ball with Simmons pushing the pace.
“You see how he just impacts other people. He makes other dudes better, and he likes doing that,” Vaughn said.
“… When you’re able to touch the basketball — and Ben allows everyone to have an openness about the possession. There’s a chance you might get the basketball on every single possession when he’s dribbling.
“He’s just looking for the open guy. He has the ability to play with pace and if you have the correct spacing and are willing to shoot, he’ll get you a shot.”
In fact, six of Simmons’ 11 assists on Tuesday were for 3-pointers and Lonnie Walker IV said the combination of the Australian’s court vision and Brooklyn’s outside shooting is “dangerous”.
“Shoutout to Ben 10,” Walker IV said.
“From the beginning of the game I think he was just locked in. He really brought the energy for us, really changed the game as far as pushing the rock in transition. When you have a whole bunch of shooters around who are ready to shoot and running with him it becomes a really dangerous game.
“He knows where everyone is. He’s finding everyone, making sure everyone looks better and he makes his teammates, everyone around him better.
“So I think that’s something that really helps us elevate, especially throughout the game, keeping everyone within the rhythm in the flow of the game… it was a pleasure to watch him. Just happy to have him back.”
All of this goes back to that other quote from Simmons, where he told his teammates on entering the game that “they know what time it is”.
To some people like Parsons it may sound “ridiculous” or “arrogant” but to Simmons it was just a way of telling his teammates that the pace would pick up with him facilitating the offence and that in turn would open up looks for them.
They just needed to be ready to shoot and they were all night long.
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“I think certain guys know what it’s like to play with me and where their shot’s going to come from,” added Simmons.
“So for us, it’s easy. It’s just about sharing the ball and playing the right way.”
Plus, if you were to brand those comments from Simmons as “arrogant”, what about the ones he made when asked if he would deem his comeback from injury against the Jazz a success?
“We got the win, so yes. That’s the main objective for me and that’s all I care about,” he said.
While Simmons wasn’t going to talk himself up ahead of the team on that occasion Slater, the Brooklyn beat reporter for Clutch Points and host of Bleav in Nets podcast, was willing to do so.
He said the way Simmons was able to have such an immediate impact in his return was “pretty incredible” considering it was his first game since early November.
“We’re going to need to see it for a more extended period,” Slater said on his podcast.
“But this was quite the showing after such an extended layoff and as we all knew Simmons’ presence was going to bring back one of the offensive weapons that the Nets had been missing for the last two months, which has played a huge role in their struggles, and that is obviously the transition game, which is obviously the number one skill that Simmons brings to the table.
“This is a Nets team that isn’t good in the half court. Their offence stalls in the half court and that’s extremely glaring down the stretch of fourth quarters. Simmons being back and being a healthy allows them to have the transition game that they showed earlier this season.”
In fact, to only illustrate this point further, Slater pointed towards the contrast between Simmons and teammate Cam Thomas, the score-first guard who has averaged 21.1 points this season for Brooklyn.
Thomas has taken 17.1 shots per game this year compared to just 5.9 for Simmons and has a team-high usage rate of 29.9 per cent.
Simmons though leads the team with 38.9 per cent of their assists and while the sample size is still small, it seems like the Nets have a perfect balance with the pair sharing the court.
“Thomas doesn’t want to pass unless he absolutely has to and Simmons doesn’t want to shoot unless he absolutely has to. It’s just funny seeing that juxtaposition on the floor,” Slater said.
“But it’s also ironic because it’s exactly what those two guys need alongside one another. I’ve said that Thomas needs a guy next to him who can do two things, that’s handle the ball and defend at the point of attack.
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“… So you get a guy like Simmons, who can defend at the point of the attack, who can handle the ball and facilitate, get out in transition, take some of the pressure off Thomas as a facilitator, which obviously isn’t the main strength of his game, and it’s going to look a lot better.
“Same for Mikal Bridges in the sense that he lets him slide back to an off-ball role. It allows him to run the floor and pick his spots to create in a half court, not forcing him to do that at a rate that he never really has throughout his career and not having to handle the ball all the time is going to allow himself to have more energy to expend on the defensive end of the floor.
“There’s just a trickle-down effect from Simmons and I think we saw all of that in this game last night from the jump. This was the vision for Brooklyn, Simmons pushing the pace and creating transition looks to keep the Nets out of the half court.”
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As Slater went on to point out, Tuesday’s game didn’t answer every question about Simmons, starting with whether he can actually stay on the court long enough.
“And to this point in his Nets’ career he hasn’t even come close to doing that and that’s just a fact,” Slater said.
Simmons’ contract situation only makes it even more important that he is able to stay healthy, with the Australian signed through to the 2024-25 season and owed $78.2 million over the next two seasons.
Even if he ended up getting traded, staying on the court is Brooklyn’s best chance of getting the most value in return for Simmons.
Then, there is also the question of what sort of role Simmons will play in the clutch minutes, having been left on the bench late in the team’s season-opener against Cleveland.
“You’ve got to ask coach, I don’t know,” Simmons said when pressed on why he sat the final five minutes of Brooklyn’s defeat and given Tuesday’s win was a blowout that also remains an area of concern.
But even if Simmons isn’t ‘back’ or the complete player some people want him to be, there is little doubting this was a step in the right direction.
And with a gauntlet of games on the upcoming schedule (including Phoenix, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Boston twice) the Nets will definitely need this version of Simmons more consistently if they are to make a late push towards a playoff berth.
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