You can spell Ben Simmons without a D, but you can’t make the NBA’s best D without Ben.
Simmons was named to the NBA’s All-Defensive First Team on Monday night, one of three Sixers to earn All-Defense honors. Joel Embiid and Matisse Thybulle were named to the Second Team, the latter playing the fewest minutes per game (20.0) of any All-NBA Defense honoree in history.
Simmons was one of just two players to earn nods – and first-team nods at that – on all 100 ballots cast by a global panel of writers and broadcasters, joining Utah’s Rudy Gobert, who won the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year Award for the third time in four seasons.
Those two joined two Bucks, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jrue Holiday, and Golden State’s Draymond Green on the first team, as voters selected two guards, two forwards, and one center for each team.
Embiid was the runner-up among centers, earning eight first-team and 71 second-team votes for 87 total points (players receiving two for a first-team vote and one for a second-team nod). Thybulle, meanwhile, got three first-team and 57 second-team votes, putting the pair on a second team with Clippers star Kawhi Leonard and two members of the Heat: Bam Adebayo and former Sixer Jimmy Butler.
Danny Green was one of 29 players who also received votes, earning three second-team nods.
This is the second straight first-team nod for Simmons, who was runner-up to Gobert in the DPOY race this year, while the second-team nods are the third total selection for Embiid and first for Thybulle.
Those three, as well as Green and the rest of the squad, helped Philly finish 2020-21 with the NBA’s second-best defensive rating.
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