Ben Simmons has to embrace his inner WWE superstar.
I don’t watch wrestling as much as I used to anymore. But it was definitely something I grew up on. The WWF — not the WWE, but the one from the 1990’s. The WCW. TNA. All that good stuff. I ate it up.
The concept of heel and face was foreign to me. I didn’t understand anything about the business. I just knew that there were wrestlers that I didn’t like and wrestlers I loved. There were heroes and villains. Nothing more, nothing less. At least that’s how it worked in my mind as a child.
Most wrestlers play both sides of the coin at one point or another. Stone Cold Steve Austin. The Rock. Triple H. Kane and The Undertaker. All immensely popular characters. All have been cheered and all have been booed.
I bring this up because Thursday’s matchup between the 76ers and the Brooklyn Nets is going to feel like an old-school WWF matchup between a heel and a hero.
Why? Because Ben Simmons — Thursday night’s villain — will be on the bench for the Nets.
He’s not going to play in the game, but after what happened in last season’s playoff loss to the Atlanta Hawks and everything that followed? Just the sight of him is going to set 76ers fans off.
It’s bad enough that Sixers fans waited outside of the Nets team hotel to actually boo Simmons. That’s how bad the vibe is between the two sides right now.
There’s nothing that will ever change that. There’s no one who can stop it. There’s nothing that can be done. The boos will forever rain down on Simmons when he’s in Philadelphia. And, as Kevin Durant said, no one is going to hold his hand through it. He’s got to just eat it.
“Absolutely not. That’s one of those things he’s going to have to experience for himself. I can’t go over there. Nobody is going to hold his hand. I’m sure there’s going to be some personal attacks. There’s going to be some words that may trigger you, personally, but that’s just how fans are, they want to get under our skin. They want to let their voices be heard. I think part of the experience of coming to an NBA game is to heckle. Some people don’t even enjoy basketball. Their lives are so [expletive] they get to just aim it at other people.”
Those are some pretty wise words from a veteran player who, by the way, has been through this before with the Oklahoma City Thunder fanbase after deciding to leave that team.
Steve Nash had some advice for Simmons, too.
“I hope he enjoys it. How many people can go in the arena and get booed by the entire place?”
The message: Embrace it. Embrace the hate. Simmons needs to be the heel. He should channel his inner Stone Cold Steve Austin. Be Triple H. Give them his best Undertaker impression.
That’s the best way to handle this. Because, after all, the boos aren’t going away. He’s earned them. Was he right to get out of a situation that he didn’t want to be in? Absolutely. Could he have handled it better? Most definitely.
But there’s no rehashing it now. There’s no doing it over again. It just is what it is. And it will probably be this in perpetuity.
So Simmons better get used to it.
