Even if he has not played in the NBA yet, the first-overall pick of the 2016 draft, Ben Simmons, has already drawn a lot of praise for his style of play. His game has been compared to some of the best in the league, and now, one the all-time greats has given his take on who he thinks Simmons plays like.
Newly-inducted Hall-of-Famer Shaquille O'Neal admitted to only paying attention to this year's top two picks, but knows his co-LSU product will be good in the NBA.
Shaq had this to say about Simmons last week:
“I don’t know all of them (from the draft), but I know my guy’s going to be pretty good, Ben Simmons.
“He's a LeBron-type player. What I mean by that, LeBron does a nice job of making everybody else around him better — passing the ball, doing the small things — and Ben is that type of player.”
The 20-year-old showed the skills he had not only as a scorer but also as a passer during his summer league stint last June and left a lot of people in awe. He has the rare combination of size with dribbling and passing skills which helped raise his stock to become the consensus top-pick.
Being compared to LeBron James (who he worked out with this summer) maybe a huge feather on his cap, but living up to the expectations may also give him added pressure once he debuts in the NBA.
During his lone college season, the Australian performed well with impressive numbers of 19.2 points, 11.8 rebounds and 4.8 assists per game. However, that production was not enough to lead his team to an NCAA tournament berth.
Despite the underwhelming results the Tigers ended up with last year, Shaq still continued to give good words about Simmons and said talked about his development:
“He took a lot of flack, especially at LSU with not really taking over games, but he's young. He'll get to that.
“When it comes to other aspects of the game, he's very, very intelligent, he plays the game very well.”
Having played with the best during his stellar career, the four-time NBA champion surely knows what it takes to be a good player.
Now that the season is about to kickoff in less than two months, it's only a matter of time until we see if Ben Simmons can live up to the hype.
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