The Ben conundrum
Nets feeling Sixers’ angst over inconsistent availability of Simmons
The 76ers aren’t done kicking Ben Simmons while he’s down. Simmons’ former teammate Georges Niang went on Philadelphia’s “The John Kincade Show” and said Simmons “kinda handicapped” the Sixers at the beginning of last season when he cited mental health issues as the reason for sitting out the entire front half of the season before forcing a trade to Brooklyn.
“When you’re building a roster — I’m talking from a general manager standpoint — you take, I don’t know how much he makes ($35.9M) but it’s a max contract, you immediately take that off the books (because he says) I’m not playing,” Niang said in an interview that aired on Friday. “Now you have to figure out where other role players have to step up and replace the passing, dribbling, rebounding, defense.”
A member of the panel of interviewers interrupted Niang to point out he didn’t mention shooting, an area Simmons has notoriously lacked dating back well before his arrival in Brooklyn.
“Yeah,” Niang said. “Exactly my point.”
Niang also touched on the impact Simmons’ inconsistent availability had on the locker room.
“The team aspect is very important I think. Doc Rivers does a really good job of buying into the team. So when you don’t know who you’re gonna have night in and night out. Is he coming back? Is he this?” he said. “I feel like the updates we would get about him, when I turned on my TV, I was listening to Stephen A. Smith like he’s gonna be at practice tomorrow. And there he is. So last year was difficult because you didn’t know who you had, right? And the trade deadline’s coming up, and everyone’s like, well who’s being attached to him? It was just like you had that uneasy feeling.”
When informed that Simmons had fallen out of the starting lineup in Brooklyn, Niang responded: “Well that ain’t none of my business.”
By now, Nets fans now know Niang’s harsh truths all too well.
They experienced a similar unease when Simmons arrived in Brooklyn as part of the James Harden deal last season, only to have the goalposts for his debut continually pushed back until Brooklyn’s final first-round playoff game, the morning of which he told the team he had back soreness and would be unavailable to play.
Those patterns of inconsistent availability have continued after an offseason that included a minor procedure on his lower back.
Simmons has appeared in 42 of the Nets’ 59 games this season. He is averaging seven points, six rebounds and six assists per game. He missed five straight games due to left knee soreness from late January into early February and suffered a lateral left calf strain in late November that sidelined him four games. Both setbacks occurred when Simmons played in both games of a back-to-back.
Simmons had fluid drained from his knee twice this season, including once right before the All-Star break, he told reporters in Chicago on Friday. He also received a platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injection that the team hoped would alleviate the pain in his knee, but after a few practices, Simmons said the pain returned.
It’s a lot like the epidural he received to alleviate the pain he endured due to a herniated disk in his lower back last season. The epidural worked, at first, but its effects subsided shortly after, and Simmons never made his debut until this season.
“It’s frustrating ... that’s an injury I’ve never dealt with before,” he said on Friday. “So it’s something I’m learning about, that we’re learning about.”
Nets head coach Jacque Vaughn suggested Simmons recharged during the All-Star break, that “these days came at the right time for our group,” and that he was “looking forward to this group coming back with a clean slate of juice.” Shortly after, those words were undercut when the team ruled Simmons out for the first game after a nine-day break.
Simmons said he expects to have his left knee re-evaluated in a week.
“I didn’t have a normal AllStar (break). I was rehabbing the whole time still, after the PRP. So my break was just rehabbing and it was trying to get back out there,” he said. “And then obviously, we played five-on-five three days ago, four days ago, which was good. But (I) wasn’t moving, I didn’t move and didn’t have that strength.
“Structurally, (the knee is) good. It’s just a strength thing and getting it under control. It’s a frustrating process with the back and dealing with it all. It’s just something I have to deal with and it’s taking time. I just have to stay on top of it. We’re trying to work towards me coming back to being in a place where I can play at a level I can contribute and move.”
Simmons said he’s been battling the knee issue all year, that he wants to be on the court regardless of his minutes workload and that he hasn’t been 100% healthy all year.
“I’m just trying to give the team what I can,” he said. “So, it’s frustrating. But it’s the league we’re in also. I’m trying to give myself to my teammates as much as possible.”
It’s clear, however, as the missing games continue to pile, that the Nets are dealing with the very headache Niang described in Philadelphia last season.
“He will not play these two games: That is a certainty,” Vaughn said. “Then we’ll just kind of see how the knee responds. When you’re strengthening things — just like the offseason, where you can do some loading, you can do some lifting — but it’s probably not ideal for you to play also while you’re doing heavy loading, heavy lifting. So that’s the space we’re in right now is he’s in this strengthening phase.
“Then, hopefully, the knee responds the way we want it to and he jumps right back on the train with us.” nd has there been any thought given to shutting Simmons down for the rest of the season?
“Zero,” Vaughn said pregame on Friday. “We’re 24 games from making it into the playoffs and so the thought was we could use the time coming out All-Star break where we didn’t play games. Then it’s a great time to reassess.”
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