After the transaction season ended in mid-August, owner Joshua Harris and 76ers management flew to Los Angeles to meet with Simmons and agent Rich Paul. The Sixers intended to tell Simmons they couldn’t find a deal for him and hoped to put aside differences and enter the season on the same page, sources said.
More on this storyline
Jon Krawczynski: The real key here is that the information has now become public. And that is a very big sign to me that the Ben Simmons camp is going to start to really ratchet the temperature up on the Philadelphia 76ers, who so far have not gotten really close to anything in terms of the Ben Simmons trade. I think there’s some frustration in that camp, about the lack of progress. I think they are trying to make it as clear as possible that coming back to the 76ers is not a an outcome that they are going to go for. -via Spotify / September 8, 2021
Brian Windhorst on Sixers possibly fining Ben Simmons: The Simmons side basically has told me, ‘We are prepared for for that ramification.’ -via Spotify / September 3, 2021