Clemson basketball: Will the real Aamir Simms please stand up?

Clemson basketball will go as far as Aamir Simms leads them.

Clemson basketball senior Aamir Simms brought a lot of hope when he decided to return for his senior season after going through the NBA draft process. His coming back didn’t surprise anyone paying attention as he isn’t on the NBA radar.

That isn’t a slight to him, he can still go have a lucrative and successful basketball career on other continents like former All-ACC guard Malcolm Delaney has, but the NBA wasn’t interested.

He had an opportunity to change that in his final year at Clemson.

Unfortunately, Simms has been disappointing in his fourth year. He is averaging two points and two rebounds less in his fourth season than he did in his third and he has disappeared for long stretches through his first 13 games this year.

In the last three games for Clemson basketball, all blowout losses, Simms has been nowhere to be found.

In a 35-point blowout loss to Virginia, the 6-8 250 pound senior, logged 25 minutes, had just two points as he was 1/9 from the field, and five rebounds. Saturday in a blowout loss to Florida State, he again logged 25 minutes, had five points on 1/3 shooting and just five rebounds.

In 13 games this season, Simms has had six games where he scored more than 10 points and seven games where he scored fewer than 10 points. He has logged at least 20 minutes in 12 of his 13 games. Simms also has just one double-double this season – against Morehead State when he had 10 points and 12 rebounds.

Last year in his breakout junior season, Simms had five double-doubles – four of them were in ACC play. If Simms truly believes that he has NBA level talent, he has to start showing up more consistently than he has in 2020-2021.

Who knows what the future holds in store for Simms but what we do know is that if Clemson basketball is going to get back on track and resemble the team that started out 9-1, he is going to be the reason why.

His leadership on and off the court is paramount to the success of the Tigers and they need him more than ever as they try to find a way out of their current rut.