The Sixers let their foot off the gas pedal in a six-point win over the Nets on Wednesday night, which resulted in some justifiable moaning and griping among the fan base.

Doc Rivers downplayed the late near-collapse, as he always does, but an old problem reared its ugly head in the fourth quarter, and I clipped it and shared it on Twitter here:

As a disclaimer, it’s worth nothing that the Ben Simmons spacing issue hasn’t been much of a problem this year. We haven’t seen a ton of it. In late game scenarios, they’ve been able to play through Joel Embiid and Tobias Harris as dual closers and minimize the issue of defenders leaving Ben and putting stress on his teammates instead.

But this particular play was really quirky. They looked like they weren’t entirely sure what they wanted to get into, and then with Nicolas Claxton sagging almost 10 feet off Simmons, Ben went and threw a post entry to Embiid anyway:

Plenty of space to drive there, or shoot, but Ben forces it instead, which results in a turnover. Embiid is smothered before he can even handle that ball or throw a cross-court pass.

There were other instances last night where Claxton did the same thing, and here’s how the very next possession went:

This is better. They realize Simmons’ man is just giving him space, so they toss the ball to Furkan Korkmaz instead and set that cross screen with Seth Curry, which typically allows Embiid to front his man on the low block. Simmons, however, is just sort of walking down to the dunker spot and the Sixers get bailed out with a foul call.

Here’s the third possession in this chunk of plays:

This is much better.

They go into a Curry/Embiid pick and roll, but with Claxton again just sitting at the elbow, they throw it back to Simmons and he immediately attacks the space. Claxton actually does a really nice job of holding his ground, and Simmons settles for that turnaround hook shot, which doesn’t go.

One more video clip for you:

Same thing here. Claxton is cheating to his right because he wants to double Embiid on the entry pass. So Korkmaz gives the ball back to Simmons, this time at the foul line, and Ben bulldozes his way forward and gets to the foul line.

What you see in that series of four plays is better recognition of the conceded space, and Ben adjusts his approach and begins to go downhill instead. He hit four of six free throws in the game’s three final minutes, and had a big block and a defensive rebound.

The spacing problem doesn’t show itself as frequently as it once did, but you still see these wonky possessions late in games, every so often. Typically, if Harris is available, you’d allow him to be the pick and roll initiator or iso guy, and put Ben in the dunker spot, because you can’t just sag off a guy standing under the basket on the weak side. You can sag back, but not forward, if that makes any sense, since it stresses the defensive rotation in a big way if you do the latter, which puts a 6’10” guy wide open within a foot of the rim.

Bottom line, this will be a problem as long as Ben is not a shooter. Doc Rivers has done a good job of hiding it, and last night Ben made the proper adjustments after a couple of initial failures, but it’s always going to be there. They just need to keep masking it.