NBA fans react to Ben Simmons’ cryptic tweet amid James Harden trade rumors

Does it mean anything?

We’ve officially reached the “NBA stars tweeting emojis in the middle of trade talk” portion of the James Harden saga.

On Thursday, ESPN reported that the Houston Rockets were “increasingly expanding trade discussions” further than the two teams Harden reportedly prefers, the Philadelphia 76ers and Brooklyn Nets.

As part of that report, Adrian Wojnarowski and Ramona Shelburne said the Sixers “have signaled a willingness to include All-Star guard Ben Simmons in trade packages for Harden, [but] those talks have come nowhere close to a deal.”

Then, The Athletic’s Shams Charania basically said the same thing before Sixers president Daryl Morey declared “We are not trading Ben Simmons.”

Got all that? Good. Now, on Friday, there was this one-emoji tweet from Simmons:

I’m trying to figure out what that means: is it annoyance at even being mentioned in trade talks? Is it backing up Morey somehow?

The other strange thing is Morey retweeted it:

But here’s the thing: Simmons tweets out this emoji A LOT:

It could mean nothing, it could mean everything. The drama continues. Here’s some reaction from fans:

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