76ers: No, that wasn’t a cellphone in Simmons’ pocket

When Ben Simmons returned to practise with the Philadelphia 76ers this week, he looked exactly how you would have expected. After spending all off-season as the subject of trade rumours and reportedly insisting he wouldn’t play another game for Philadelphia, Simmons reluctantly showed up to the team facility after a weeks-long holdout. The team had fined him at least $680,000 (U.S.) for missing three pre-season games and placed $8.5 million of his salary in escrow in anticipation of docking him even more pay.

Simmons practised with the team for the first time on Sunday, which by all accounts was uneventful. But it was Monday’s practice, with television cameras present, that made headlines. In video captured by NBC Sports Philadelphia, eagle-eyed viewers spotted something in the pocket of Simmons’s sweatpants. It looked kind of like a cellphone, and plenty of media outlets ran with the story.

Nothing Simmons has done in the past few months has indicated that he’s beyond checking his texts during practice, so it didn’t seem entirely out of the question that he’d drift through drills with his phone flopping around his pocket. But, according to The Athletic’s Shams Charania, it wasn’t a phone in his pocket. It was his practice jersey.

That explanation makes a lot more sense. That white thing sticking out of his pocket looks too small to be a phone screen and much more like a patch on the hem of a jersey.

But still, if you intended to give any effort whatsoever in practice, you wouldn’t stuff an entire jersey into the pocket of your pants. And Simmons didn’t bother to pretend to be engaged in practice on Tuesday when he was reportedly thrown out for refusing to sub into a drill.