Brooklyn Nets guard Ben Simmons has been one of the most polarizing players in the NBA for a number of reasons related to how his career has changed over the past few seasons. To that point, what some had suspected about him with regards to him playing last season were true.
In an interview that Simmons had with Marc J. Spears of Andscape, Simmons admitted that he came back from his back injury sooner than he should have to play in the 2022-23 season. Simmons, during his days with the Philadelphia 76ers, missed the entire 2021-22 season due to a combination of withholding his services in Philadelphia and having back surgery after being traded to Brooklyn.
Simmons was healthy enough to be able to play in the first game of the Nets’ season this past year, but throughout a season in which he played just 42 games, he missed time for a variety of injuries related to his back and knees. Eventually, he was ruled out in March for the rest of the season due to a nerve impingement in his back that he spent most of this summer rehabbing from.
Here’s Simmons discussing coming back to play before he was truly ready to go:
“Yeah, definitely. I was definitely on the floor when I shouldn’t have been on the floor at the start of the season. But I also don’t think I was in a place not to play. That played into it too, but at the end of the day, my body is my career, so I do need it to be healthy. So, I made decisions based on just trying to please the people. I don’t think that was right, personally, for me. But I’m a competitor and I do want to compete.”
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