Ben Simmons still hasn’t rediscovered his aggression

An odd play late in the Nets’ 115-102 defeat of the Milwaukee Bucks on Sunday summed up the Ben Simmons experience perfectly.

Brooklyn was up 106-89 with four minutes left in the fourth quarter when Simmons created a turnover by poking the ball away from Damian Lillard. Dennis Schröder corralled the rock, then quickly whipped a one-handed pass up the court to a streaking Simmons. Cam Johnson and Cam Thomas were trailing behind him.

Brook Lopez, who had nine blocks entering the night, was Milwaukee’s last line of defense. The Nets had a 3-on-1 advantage in transition and Simmons technically made the right basketball play in that moment, pitching the ball back to Johnson, which should have resulted in an easy bucket. But Simmons barely looked at the rim, and because of his lack of aggression, Lopez did not have to cover much ground defensively. The 7-1 center could essentially guard two players at once.

Johnson, also playing passive, passed it back to Simmons instead of throwing up a shot. Then Simmons, looking to dish yet again, got caught up in the air under the rim and wound up throwing the ball straight into Lopez’s chest. The Nets got nothing out of that sequence despite having a numbers advantage. Luckily for them, Thomas was there to collect the loose ball and keep the possession alive.

Sometimes your teammates need you to be a little selfish. When Simmons first caught Schröder’s pass, he was up the court ahead of Johnson and Thomas, had a good angle to the rim and one defender to beat. Lopez is 36 years old, and Simmons is 6-10 with a 33-inch vertical leap. There was a time when the former All-Star would have thrown it down on Lopez’s head, but we have not seen that player for a while now.

Simmons will miss his first game of the 2024-25 season on Tuesday when the Nets face the Denver Nuggets at Barclays Center. It will be the front end of Brooklyn’s first back-to-back set of the season, and the team’s medical staff will continue to be cautious with the guard’s usage coming off of lower back surgery.

Simmons, one of the highest-paid players in the league this season, has averaged just 5 points, 5.7 rebounds and 5.7 assists across his first three games. His inconsistency in terms of offensive aggression has been a common theme since he arrived in Brooklyn, but coming off a season in which he was limited to 15 games, now in a contract year, many have expected more from the 28-year-old. So far, he has not delivered.

While Simmons has still distributed the ball at a decent level, he has developed a pattern of having a few strong takes to the hoop early in each half, then declining to look at the rim for the remainder of the game. He has more fouls (14) than field goal attempts (12) through his first three games. The fouling has limited his availability and the low field goal attempts have made him — and Brooklyn’s offense while he is on the court — easier to defend.

Simmons was minus-9 in 24 minutes in Sunday’s 13-point win. He was the only starter with a negative plus/minus. His NET rating of -21.2 is the worst on the team through three games among primary rotation players. And he has just as many turnovers as field goal attempts.

Simmons has never been much of an outside scoring threat. He has attempted 36 3-pointers in his career and has made just five. However, he used to, at the very least, put pressure on opposing teams by attacking the rim far more frequently, which kept defenses honest and opened up the court for him to do what he does best.

The big guard averaged a career-best 8.2 assists during his rookie season. He attempted 12.3 shots per game across 81 appearances, scored 15.8 points a night, and did it on a 54.5% clip. For Simmons to be most impactful in Brooklyn or elsewhere, he has to channel the energy of his former self.

“Ben’s got touch in the paint, he has to finish at the rim,” Nets head coach Jordi Fernandez said. “I want those attempts to 10 to 15 attempts per game, because when he does that, he’s very aggressive in the open court and when he touches the paint good things happen.”

“That’s what the team needs from him and that’s what his teammates need him to do. And then, as we all know, he’s an unbelievable playmaker and then everything is going to open up. I’m excited to see that because once we get there, it’s going to keep getting better and better because we’ll find those paint 3s, those catch-and-shoot 3s, and Ben is going to be a big part of it.”