Welcome to Layup Lines, For the Win’s basketball newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Have feedback for the Layup Lines Crew? Leave your questions, comments and concerns through this brief reader survey. Now, here’s Prince J. Grimes.
What’s going on, y’all. Welcome back to Layup Lines. I apologize for using such an old meme reference in the headline to get you here, but it is kinda fitting considering we were probably using that meme the last time Ben Simmons was good.
OK. That was mean. But hear me out.
In the three years since his last All-Star season in 2020-21, Simmons has played a grand total of 57 games. Some of that is due to injuries, some of it is because he never fully recovered from what happened against the Atlanta Hawks. Whatever the reasons, it’s been a long time since we’ve had enough evidence to believe he can be a good NBA player again.
Unless, of course, you’re into those offseason workout videos athletes love to post of themselves working on things they never actually do in games. Then, believers of the Brooklyn Nets forward have the most promising evidence yet of his impending bounce-back after four years of trying.
Simmons has been in the gym with renowned trainer Chris Brickley, and the results look about as good as you could expect for someone with good editing and no defense in front of him.
If I sound skeptical, it’s because I am.
We’ve been down this road before. FTW has teased the potential Simmons return to form time and again and again and again. There’s a reason people like Doris Burke and Shaquille O’Neal have criticized him in the past. So, forgive me if I need a little more than a workout video to believe he’s fixed.
I hope I’m wrong. I would love to see Simmons be good again. He’s only 28. And Brickley is really selling it, responding to another skeptic on X by saying Simmons “is better now than his All Star seasons.”
That’s saying a lot.
Thanks bro but Ben is healthy, moving very well, he is better now than his All Star seasons. I’ve never co-signed a player that didn’t prove it when their season started. Trust me on this one. https://t.co/B2r0Z0UKtX
— Chris Brickley (@Cbrickley603) September 18, 2024
At the same time, the problems with Simmons have been just as much about his physical breaking down as his mental. Back issues limited him to just 15 games last season. It’s the third straight year he’s been sidelined by back problems. Brickley can’t fix that.
That’s before we get to his shaken confidence. Though he averaged a career-high 11.9 rebounds per 36 minutes in those 15 games last season, and his 8.6 assists per 36 minutes were the second-best of his career, he was clearly a more tentative offensive player. Yes, he shot a career-high 58% from the field, but it was on a career-low 7.4 attempts per game — a number that’s dipped each year he’s played.
Even if he somehow gets over that mental hurdle, how much have the injuries and time away from the floor impacted his mobility and defensive abilities?
I don’t know the answer to any of that, but I know this video doesn’t bring me any closer to knowing either. So, I’ll just wait to see Simmons in a real game before I believe he’s back. You probably should too.
Adrian Wojnarowski retires
You’ve surely heard by now, but ESPN NBA Insider Adrian Wojnarowski announced his retirement this morning.
Normally, this type of news would have led the newsletter, but we here at FTW have already done so much coverage that I didn’t have much more to add. From reaction around the sports world to the biggest Woj bombs to Wojnarowski’s potential replacement at ESPN, we hit it all.
Our guy Mike Sykes contextualized the news about as well as anyone could in today’s The Morning Win: It’s the end of an era.
“Of course, I’m happy for him. He’s worked hard and has earned the right to enjoy the fruits of his labor.
But at the same time, Woj was one of the defining characters of the NBA basketball era I loved the most. His reporting shaped the zeitgeist. He didn’t just break news stories – he changed how the league was covered. Nobody scooped things the way he scooped things.
For so long, in the early aughts going into the 2010s, following Woj on Twitter was like being an NBA insider yourself. The platform was still young — everyone in real life wasn’t on it. But Woj used the platform as a news-breaking forum, so you’d have the scoop before all your friends did. It was almost like you were breaking the news yourself.
It’s not hyperbole to say that the NBA doesn’t become the league it currently is without the work Woj did covering it. He’s an essential character in the league’s story over the last decade and change in the same way an NBA superstar would be.”
Well said. Simply put, the NBA won’t be the same without Woj.
Shootaround
— Isaac Okoro was thrilled that he was a part of the final Woj bomb
— LeBron James ripped the Panthers in a tweet in support of Bryce Young
— Netflix’s trailer for the Starting 5 is here and it looks amazing
— LeBron hilariously poked fun at the memes of himself reading the first page of a book
