Ben Simmons reportedly didn’t appreciate it when his Brooklyn Nets teammates asked him if he planned on playing during the team’s first-round exit against the Boston Celtics. “They’re having a team chat before Game 4, thinking he’s going to play against the Celtics, and from what I’m told, Ben just left the chat,” Ric Bucher told Colin Cowherd on FS1’s The Herd last week (8:30 mark). “They asked him, ‘Are you going to play?’ Ben left the chat. Like he didn’t even answer the question. Just left the chat.”
Source: Timothy Rapp @ Bleacher Report
Source: Timothy Rapp @ Bleacher Report
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More on this storyline
On Tuesday, Rivers told VC the issue that drove Simmons out of Philadelphia had nothing to do with his comments and had everything to do with a build-up of grievances between the player and the franchise. He did not provide details: “That one comment thing had nothing to do with why Ben wanted to leave,” Rivers said. “Alright? Let me just say that. It was a lot of things as Ben told me — and publicly now — that happened long before I got there. What frustrated me was that I still think it shouldn’t have been enough to want to leave. I just didn’t and I told Ben that. I kept telling him that. This is not why you want to leave a team. You work these things out. They didn’t get worked out and so yeah, we’ve had one talk. Not a long, long talk, but we did have one good talk.” Rivers said he hopes Simmons will do well in Brooklyn. “I want the kid to do well. I don’t have any, like, bad feelings about him. He didn’t do anything wrong to me. I just want most guys do, I really do. Now I want to kick all their butts when they’re not on my team. That’s the competitive side of me, but as a human being, I think we all should want Ben and all these guys to do well.” -via NetsDaily / August 3, 2022
Rivers said he hopes Simmons will do well in Brooklyn. “I want the kid to do well. I don’t have any, like, bad feelings about him. He didn’t do anything wrong to me. I just want most guys do, I really do. Now I want to kick all their butts when they’re not on my team. That’s the competitive side of me, but as a human being, I think we all should want Ben and all these guys to do well.” -via NetsDaily / August 3, 2022
Seth Curry said Ben Simmons need not bother searching for a shooting mentality and should instead focus on his unique strengths. “I don’t think he needs a jump shot,’’ he told News Corp. “He’s just got to do what he does best – which is defend, rebound, push the ball, make plays for other people and attack the rim. “When you’ve got the size and talent like him, who takes not one but two and sometimes three guys to stop him getting to the rim, that is a lot in itself.’’ -via The Australian / July 31, 2022