Ben Simmons pulled out the Angel Reese paint moves last night

He is left handed too.. wow that is bad. I’m fairly confident I would make that with my left hand and it’s my weaker hand.

It’s like his brain got re-wired backwards.

Have we ever seen athlete as good as Ben Simmons completely mentally break themselves so spectacularly before? Maybe Chuck Knoblauch, who was on a potential darkhorse track to the Hall of Fame (44.3 bWAR through his age 30 season) before he notoriously developed the yips at age 31 and was then out of baseball two seasons later?

But even that wasn't as bad as Simmons, I don't think. He was already a perennial All-Star at age 24, but then infamously crumbled at the shadow of Trae Young with the season on the line and he's been afraid to shoot ever since. Not only does he not like to shoot, he seems to actively avoid putting himself in situations where he might have to go to the free throw line.

He was never a good free throw shooter, but pre-emasculation he shot 59.7% on 5.2 attempts per 36 mintues. Post-emasculation he's shooting 44.7% on 1.6 attempts. When looking at his stats I briefly thought maybe he'd turned things around this year, he's shooting 75%! But then I saw he's only attempted 4 free throws in 12 games (24.6 minutes per game). That's absurdly low. The only way to play that many minutes and shoot that few free throws is by actively avoiding being fouled.

(Being that this is an LSU-centric board I think we can at least quietly rejoice on being vindicated on our feelings about Simmons from his time at LSU. It was completely clear even then that he wasn't someone who had any passion and was fine with sleep walking his way through things. He likes the idea of being a famous basketball player, but doesn't actually like being a basketball player. LSU fans were viewed as salty at the time, but history has proven the assessment correct)

Why didn’t he just dunk that?