Ben Simmons is one of the most unique basketball players of all time. But one of the original pioneers for his style of play was Rick Barry.
Much like Simmons, during his professional basketball career, Barry was celebrated for his versatility and his well-roundedness. He knows a thing or two about making an impact on his team in a variety of ways.
Barry and Simmons are two of ten players in league history to have career averages of at least 15.0 points, 6.0 rebounds, 4.0 assists, and 1.5 steals per game. The others are Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Clyde Drexler, Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, LeBron James, Russell Westbrook, and LaMelo Ball.
(Simmons and Ball are the only two players in that group who did not make the NBA’s 75th-anniversary list for the greatest to ever play the game.)
But if you sort those players by career free-throw percentage, Barry ranks first (90.0%) while Simmons ranks last (59.7%). During All-Star weekend, veteran basketball reporter Marc Stein said this about his conversation with Barry (via Substack):
“He naturally had lots to say when I asked him if he’d like the opportunity to try to work with Ben Simmons on his wayward free-throw shooting.”
We do not need to relitigate why Simmons ought to improve at the free-throw line or how much it would help the overall productivity of his game.
But some quick numbers that help illustrate this point, per Cleaning the Glass: Relative to players at his position, when it comes to drawing shooting fouls, Simmons has ranked in the 96th percentile or better during each of his non-rookie campaigns in the NBA.
However, when it comes time to convert and-1 opportunities, he has never ranked above the 65th percentile and he has only once ranked above the 50th percentile. This is something that frustrates the 1975 NBA Finals MVP, who aired his grievances to Stein:
“He definitely could be fixed,” Barry said of Simmons. “Somebody already told me he said he would never want to do it, but I don’t understand: What difference does it make how you do it? If he was an 80-percent shooter, with his size, he would be like Shaq. You could take him and post up those little guards and he would just abuse them — and he could hope he got fouled. He would be such a dominant factor. He becomes one of the best players in the league.”
Stein concluded that Barry is “under no illusions” and knows it will “never happen” because Simmons is “known to recoil” from any criticism.
But one reason why it is particularly interesting for Simmons: Some believe that the former No. 1 overall pick actually shoots with the wrong hand. This is something we first wrote about it at For The Win nearly four years ago.
Simmons is a left-handed shooter but in 2016, he said he believes he was supposed to be right-handed. He had previously laughed off the notion of switching hands for a jumper, though back in June 2021, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst reported that Simmons would actually consider shooting with his other hand.
76ers' Ben Simmons considering switching his dominant shooting hand, report says https://t.co/2wFJtoWqbn pic.twitter.com/jsvwfE9CvQ
— Sporting News NBA (@sn_nba) June 22, 2021
However, although we still haven’t seen him play an NBA game since then, Simmons’ workout footage from August 2021 tells us that such a change did not happen.
The Ringer’s Kevin O’Connor, who is the public thought leader of this theory, has long felt Simmons is releasing his shot with the wrong hand.
According to his research, during his one-and-done season while at LSU, the left-handed jump shooter released only ten of his “non-jumpers” (e.g. layups, dunks, floaters, runners, hooks, etc.) with his left hand but 39 were with both hands.
Ben Simmons took 95 shots in the playoffs. He tried…
67 shots using his right hand
19 shots using both hands
9 shots using his left handIn his career, over 70% of his shots are righty.
Simmons in 2016: "I think I was supposed to be right-handed." https://t.co/6Ox3L37jdY
— Kevin O'Connor (@KevinOConnorNBA) June 21, 2021
In fact, the most recent time that we saw Simmons on the basketball court, we also saw him take more shots with both hands than he did with his left hand.
Considering he has a tendency to release his shot with both hands more often than he does with his left hand, but he still decides to shoot free throws as a lefty anyway, an underhanded free-throw using both hands would make some sense.
This is something people have postured about on message boards including Reddit, RealGM, and Inside Hoops. People have argued that his soft touch on passes suggests he could have similar luck at the charity stripe if he decided to take Barry’s advice.
It is unlikely Simmons ever concedes to the underhand free-throw, but as Malcolm Gladwell noted in this episode of the Revisionist History podcast, this is something he ought to at least consider if he wants to improve at the line.
