Ben Simmons of the Philadelphia 76ers may be one of the most entertaining young guns in The Association (and doing so as a rookie) while drawing comparisons to established greats like LeBron James and Magic Johnson, but his efficiency — particularly against the Boston Celtics — is apparently not that good.
His one-point dud the other night notwithstanding (he bounced back with a 16-point, eight rebound, and eight assist effort in a loss), the Australian has been less than impressive against the Celtics this year.
Ben Simmons has not had a positive plus-minus once in seven games against the Celtics. He's -92 over seven games against them.
— Jay King (@ByJayKing) May 6, 2018
Since the advent of sports analytics and how it relates to a player's true impact, the plus-minus has been a dependable stat for most teams. In fact, real time box scores now includes it as a standard. The plus-minus, in a nutshell, records how many points the team scores while the player is in the game. In turn, this exposes players that put up statistically-impressive numbers but otherwise get outscored due to inability to get stops or sustain the scoring. This is subjective however, since it requires a fair amount of context, but as it stands, it's still a good metric to gauge efficiency.
According to ESPN's Real Plus-Minus tracker for the 2017-18 season, the Sixers point guard has an RPM (Real Plus Minus) rating of 3.05 and ranks near the bottom 40 at number 33. For comparison, his Sixers teammates' Robert Covington and Joel Embiid are in the top 15, with the former as high as seventh.
For what it is worth, his Utah Jazz and Rookie of the Year nemesis Donovan Mitchell is nowhere in sight. So that is some ammunition he could use at least for bragging with their daily back and forth.
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