With the Philadelphia 76ers' season in the book and Ben Simmons' criticism and trade speculation at an all-time high, 34-year-old veteran Danny Green spoke honestly about Simmons' play in the 76ers' semi-finals series against the Atlanta Hawks.
“You can tell Ben’s the type of kid if he’s not encouraged, if he’s not pushed or forced to do it, he’s not the type to take that risk," Green said on Inside The Green Room. "Obviously, he's a high IQ guy. You can tell he gets a lot of assists and pushes the pace and gets paid to do what he does, because he's so good at it. Mind you, he doesn't step outside of the box because he knows well enough like—I'm good at this, so I don't need to step outside. I'm encouraged to do this, so I'm afraid to do this, type of thing.
Green signed a one-year deal with the Sixers before the season and is set to enter the offseason as an unrestricted free-agent, potentially freeing him up to speak candidly about Simmons.
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Green says the organization needs to push Simmons to attempt to broaden his offensive game and improve his shooting.
"I think they need encouragement, or some type of push to not be scared to fail at trying something new," Green continued. "He's just one of those guys, I know what I'm good at and I don't need to do anything else. And when the things that he's doing that he's good at isn't working as well—even though he played defense as well as he could for us and gave us a dynamic of assisting the ball and finding guys, and pushing the pace, we did need him to attack the rim and be more aggressive. But he felt like he wasn't getting his touch right and also at the free-throw line, it kind of crept on him mentally where he wasn't able to get the rhythm he wanted. And once you kind of see a couple go out, it starts getting at you even more. It started going down hill. I think it was a plethora of things that made a domino effect for him to kind of go into a shell. But at the same time, he still fought, he still showed up, he still played, he still worked hard, he still tried to give us his best chance for us to win with doing what he does—screening, rolling, rebounding, defending. He did it to the highest capability he could, just offensively he wasn't the Ben Simmons we needed him to be at the time."