Back injury just latest sad, sad chapter in a once-promising career

SOMEWHERE in this favored land there may still live a human being who saw Babe Ruth hit a home run with their own eyes. That lucky someone would have to be 95 years old or so, because the Bambino hit 22 homers as a Yankee in 1934 and six more as a Brave in 1935, when that erstwhile kid would’ve been 5 or 6 years old.

They may not be easy to find. But they’re probably out there.

We’re not sure if we would be equally lucky finding anyone who could bear witness to the fact that Ben Simmons was actually one of the 15 best players in the NBA, even though the league record book insists he was in 2019-20, when he was on the third team all-NBA team alongside the likes of Jimmy Butler and Jayson Tatum.

It’s sad, is what it is, because unless you think very hard, or unless you were an acolyte of the Process 76ers, the first 50 or so images you have of Simmons aren’t handling the ball so remarkably well for a man who stands 6-foot-10, or the deft way he passed the ball, or the unselfish way he ran a fast break, or the lock-down relentlessness that landed him on first-team All-Defense in back-to-back years.

No. Mostly what your memory is crowded with is him on a bench somewhere, dressed in a sweater or a business suit, maybe in his warm-ups, clapping his hands softly for his teammates, his eyes wandering when the team convenes for a huddle, then resuming his place on the bench. It is almost impossible to conjure him wearing the team colors of the Brooklyn Nets.

Simmons was ruled out for the rest of the season Thursday. It means that, by season’s end, he will have played in exactly 57 of the 191 games on which he was a member of the Nets’ roster and he will have earned roughly $86.3 million for that. It works out to $1.51 million per game as a Net, which is amazing. And it works out to $58,907 per minute, which is astonishing.

Per minute.

If you care about basketball, this is a grave disappointment, because Simmons was supposed to be a cornerstone player in the sport, a big man with vision and grace who played both ends of the floor well. He missed his whole rookie season with an injury, then all of 2021-22 (when the Nets traded for him), and has only had periodic chances to prove that since his career began to crater in Philadelphia in the 2021 playoffs.

If you care about sports in New York, even if you aren’t a Nets fan, Simmons’ case

has become the periodic cautionary tale we get sometimes, in a city whose teams are mostly unafraid to hand out bigticket contracts. It’s bad when those players fail to live up to those salaries; its exponentially worse when they can’t even post.

Almost every team has had someone like that. The Yankees had Carl Pavano, who banked $38 million and made only 26 starts for them between 2005-08. The Jets have Aaron Rodgers, of course, though his grade is incomplete assuming he plays for them next year. The Knicks had Antonio McDyess, who played a total of 18 games and cashed $26.1 million in paychecks from the Knicks from 2002-04.

There’s a separate category that Allan Houston and David Wright each belong to. Both were all-stars and foundational players on their original contracts, but after playing well the first two years of a seven-year, $100 million extension in 2001 Houston was ravaged by injury for two more and was never played again after 2005. Similarly Wright earned every penny of the first extension he signed in 2006, but after re-upping for seven years and $122 million in 2012 he only played 323 of a possible 1,134 games and retired with a year to go.

Really, the only contender for Simmons’ crown is Jed Lowrie, who signed as a free agent with the Mets in January 2019, cashed $20 million in 2019 and 2020 when he hurt his knee and wound up with eight plate appearances, total, while wearing — can you guess? Anybody? — No. 4. He drew one ninth-inning walk off Colorado’s Jairo Diaz on Sept. 16, made second on a single by Rene Rivera, advanced to third on a groundout, and that was it. If the Mets retire No. 4, it may be for Francisco Alvarez. It won’t be for Lowrie.

(Which begs the question — NO CHEATING! — what number does Ben Simmons wear for the Nets?)

It is — or, more likely, was — 10.