Ben Simmons won’t like it, but he might be back in Philadelphia soon. And with the way these fines are hitting? You couldn’t really blame him if he does return.
The 76ers fined Simmons roughly $360,000 for missing the team’s Monday night preseason game against the Raptors, Kyle Neubeck of the Philly Voice reports.
That much. For a preseason game, y’all. Ben Simmons is set up to be a multi-millionaire literally hundreds of times over from his current contract and he’s already made a ton in the NBA.
But $360,000 is still a lot of money for just about anybody. And it seems to be hitting Simmons a bit harder than he initially thought.
And he won’t be able to get the money back either, Neubeck writes.
“After being fined for missing Philadelphia’s preseason loss to the Toronto Raptors on Monday night — a penalty of roughly $360,000 — Simmons’ representation had another discussion with the players association in which it was reiterated they would be unable to recoup the money being deducted from the $8.25 million sitting in escrow, sources say, and it was communicated to the Sixers that these early fines were perhaps higher than they expected.”
That’s rough.
He could seek arbitration but it wouldn’t help because, obviously, Simmons has literally not shown up to work. The money he’s losing right now is gone forever. And it will continue to go so long as he’s away from the team.
And if that’s what the number is for a preseason game, it seems reasonable to think things will only get worse as they get into the regular season.
The only solution here — if Simmons is truly worried about the money — is to go full-on Jimmy Butler. Just show up and bring full-blown chaos into the picture.
It worked for Butler when he made his way out of Minnesota. It worked for James Harden when he wanted out of Houston, too. It would probably work for Simmons here if he truly wanted to speed things up.
We’ll see how things end up. It’s easy to say Simmons is probably fine taking these financial hits — they’re small relative to his entire contract.
But, hey. It’s not our money.
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