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Anfernee Simons dropped 30-plus points for the third straight game on Monday, the longest streak of his burgeoning career, leading the new-look Portland Trail Blazers to a blowout road victory over the defending-champion Milwaukee Bucks. He made NBA history, too, hitting seven triples against Milwaukee to set a new record for the most made threes in the first 30 starts of a player's career.
It wasn't the step-back and side-step jumpers, contested wrong-foot floaters or dazzling array of dribble moves under heavy pressure from Jrue Holiday—arguably the best perimeter defender in basketball—that made Chauncey Billups most proud of another standout Simons performance, though. What really stood out to Portland's rookie head coach is how Simons dealt with the challenge provided by Holiday on the end of the floor.
“I wasn't gonna switch him off of [Holiday],” Billups said of Simons defensively. “This is a part of his development. People are gonna try to attack you, you stand in there, take your medicine. That's how I learned as a young player. A lot of the older players tried to pick on me and they had big games against me, but that's the way you learn. I wasn't gonna switch him off of Jrue.”
Holiday finished with 23 points and six assists on 9-of-16 shooting, pushed into more of a primary offensive role for Milwaukee with Giannis Antetokounmpo resting a sore left ankle. He also accounted for over half of the Bucks' 13 turnovers, coughing the ball up seven times—Holiday's second-most turnovers in a game this season.
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“They kept trying to back [Simons] down, kept trying to chase him. I thought Ant did a really good job defensively against him,” Billups said. “He had seven turnovers in the game, and he's one of the best the game has to offer. I was most proud of that with Ant as opposed to obviously the big numbers he put up. But defensively, he had to really scrap tonight.”
Simons doesn't bear full responsibility for Holiday's uncharacteristically sloppy play with the ball. Portland switched across four and sometimes five positions on Monday; both Jusuf Nurkic and Trendon Watford fared well at times when matched up with Holiday one-on-one. Josh Hart, Justise Winslow and C.J. Elleby, to no surprise, were more aggressive and disruptive checking the Olympic gold medalist than Simons. The Blazers' help defense in pick-and-roll situations was consistently on time and well executed, too.
Portland's on-the-fly rebuild faces countless questions, but among the most important is whether their new star backcourt can hold up defensively better than their last one. Simons is essentially the same size as C.J. McCollum, and hasn't exactly been average on defense since first becoming a fixture of the Blazers' rotation last season.
But the unknown begets possibility, and Simons is still far from a finished product. Inspired by the relentless activity and intensity of his revamped team, maybe Monday's game proves a crucial turning point for Simons' defensive mettle.
