BEN SIMMONS’ PITY PARTY: HE CAN’T EVEN SHOOT A BASKETBALL

The age of athlete empowerment prompts superstars — Durant, Harden, Rodgers — to regularly feud with management, but the Simmons fiasco involves a flawed player with crippling confidence issues

    Every one of us, at some point, has wanted to blow off a job. One of my justifiable opt-outs came when the manager of the Chicago White Sox, Ozzie (The Blizzard Of Oz) Guillen, referred to me as a “f—ing fag.’’ The slur was celebrated by team management, all but ignored by Major League Baseball and exploited by my newspaper bosses, who saw a chance for a rare circulation boost.

     I paused to let those creeps marinate in their collective disgrace, then returned to work as usual. But that was in the stone ages of the mid-2000s, back when people still had to put in hours for a wage. Just two months ago, a record 4.3 million slackers bolted gigs in the United States, preferring to take stimulus freebies from our ATM-Machine-In-Chief. The phenomenon is an offshoot of what I call Pandemic Ripoff Mode, when losers feel entitled to get away with whatever because, hell, if COVID doesn’t kill us, something will eventually.

     But in general, those lost souls are walking away from $14 an hour. A much bigger malcontent, Ben Simmons, so far has walked away from $2 million and appears willing to lose millions more until the employer of his discontent, the Philadelphia 76ers, trades him to a team foolish enough to acquire him. This is a 25-year-old child, not yet a man, who is pouting because he was gently called out by his coach for certain professional limitations, such as an erratic inability to shoot a leather ball with a 4.7-inch radius through a circular rim with a diameter of 18 inches.

     To that disturbing point, Simmons passed up a wide-open dunk in the final minutes of a seventh game last summer, a buzz-killer that allowed the talent-inferior Atlanta Hawks to advance to the Eastern Conference finals. When asked if that cramp and Simmons’ offensive deficiencies were symbols of his inability to lead a championship team, Doc Rivers responded thusly, knowing the exact message he was conveying as a media-savvy veteran coach: “I don’t know that question or the answer to that right now.’’

     Four months later, Simmons continues to throw himself the longest and most pathetic pity party in recent NBA history. He missed workouts and preseason games, then finally reported to the team for the apparent purpose of engaging with no one in his perpetual sulk and maintaining an obstinacy that would get him kicked out of practice, forcing Rivers’ hand when he refused to participate in drills. What makes this an even more maddening standoff than others in sports, in the age of athlete empowerment, is that Simmons isn’t remotely on the accomplishment level of Kevin Durant, James Harden, Aaron Rodgers and others who’ve formed exit strategies around public quarrels with management bosses.

     All he’s doing is damaging his own trade value and sabotaging a team built, via the more-infamous-than-ever Process, around the concept of melding Simmons’ passing and rebounding abilities with big man Joel Embiid in a championship gambit. Embiid, seeing his title window closing in his career prime, has lost patience. “At this point, I don’t care about that man, honestly. He does whatever he wants,’’ Embiid said this week, adding, “I’m not here to babysit.’’

     Not surprisingly, in a time when athletes routinely use the “mental health’’ card to slip away from responsibilities, Simmons and superagent Rich Paul now are asking the Sixers for “time’’ while he meets with the team’s medical professionals. Because why, again? His feelings were hurt by Rivers in a season-ending press conference? For Simmons to say he isn’t “mentally ready’’ to play yet — sentiments voiced Friday through his preferred media conduit, Shams Charania of The Athletic and Stadium — is an insult to Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka. When Biles bowed out of gymnastics events at the Tokyo Olympics, those of us who wondered why she was surrendering also knew there were horrific circumstances: She was among the gymnasts sexually assaulted by Dr. Larry Nassar. And when Osaka fled the French Open in protest of having to appear at press conferences — a stance that led to a season of on-court failures and off-court misery — she did so as an individual-sport athlete whose tennis actions weren’t impacting a team, though sponsors who paid her more than $50 million last year certainly aren’t thrilled.

     Simmons is killing an entire franchise. He refused to look inward and spend his summer as Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant would — correct holes in their repertoires. Rather than locate the best shooting coaches and sports psychologists on the planet, he pouted. And don’t hold your breath if you think Friday brought a breakthrough, when Simmons spoke to Rivers, Embiid and the team and agreed to take some measure of “responsibility’’ for the situation. Teammate Tobias Harris tweeted, “And we’ll respect his privacy and space during this time. When he’s ready. we will embrace our brother with love and handle our business on the court. That’s it, that’s all.’’ More revealing, for now, Embiid spoke to a riled-up Philly crowd Friday night and said Simmons is “still our brother.” Brotherly love, in that city, is subject to change.

     As Simmons’ value deteriorates by the day, the front office gambles that he will find his way to normalcy — or another franchise relents and relinquishes an All-Star-caliber player in return. Daryl Morey is dreaming. “People should buckle in. This is going to take a long time,’’ said the team’s president of basketball operations, speaking on a Philadelphia radio station. In any sports market, fans don’t like to “buckle in.’’ In frantic Philly, they’re more likely to strangle Simmons with the belt.

     It’s another example of how one player, even one who hasn’t reached superstar status, can disrupt a season and discombobulate a team. The NBA is particularly ravaged by star privilege, with every season muddled by a “pre-agency’’ soap opera, another player trying to leverage a trade years before his scheduled free agency. In Simmons’ case, he has four years and $147 million left on his max deal.

     You’d have to be a complete nut to trade for him without any idea what is happening in that head of his. Morey and Paul are in mutual denial, especially Paul, whose girlfriend, Adele, once belted out fitting lyrics: “We could have had it all. (You're gonna wish you never had met me). Rolling in the deep.’’ It’s one thing to wait out Durant or Harden, among the greatest scorers the sport has known. Even Kyrie Irving, if he escapes his existential funk and seeks one vaccination shot to satisfy a New York City mandate, is worth waiting for because of his skills.

     But Ben Simmons, a basketball player, cannot shoot a basketball. 

     Jay Mariotti, called “the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he has gravitated by osmosis to film projects.