Ben Simmons may be overplaying his hand in free agency.<\/p>\n
The former NBA All-Star forward Simmons is seeking more than a veteran\u2019s minimum salary in free agency, Sam Amico of Hoops Wire reported on Sunday<\/a>. Amico notes that Simmons may go unsigned before training camp as a result of his stance.<\/p>\n Additionally, Amico reports that the same is true of Russell Westbrook, who also remains unsigned as he is seeking a salary above the veteran\u2019s minimum. But the Westbrook news is less surprising as we had already heard several previous reports hinting at that stance from the former MVP<\/a>.<\/p>\n With eight years of service time (he was also credited for a year during the 2021-22 season despite his contract holdout), Simmons\u2019 minimum salary for next season would be worth roughly $3.3 million. Simmons is clearly hoping for a bigger payday than that, but he unfortunately might not have much of a leg to stand on at this point.<\/p>\n Though still just 29 years old, Simmons does not shoot, he does not score, and, to a certain extent, he does not play (having only appeared in 108 of 246 games over the last three seasons combined). With those kinds of limitations, Simmons would be very hard-pressed to find a team willing to give him anything more than the minimum.<\/p>\n Overall last season, Simmons averaged 5.0 points, 4.7 rebounds, and 5.6 assists per game. Those numbers were even worse when you look at just the time he spent on a playoff contender in the LA Clippers (2.9 points, 3.8 rebounds, and 3.1 assists per game).<\/p>\n In recent weeks, we heard there were some surprise teams eyeing Simmons<\/a> and even one in particular that appeared to be emerging as a frontrunner<\/a>. But until the former No. 1 pick Simmons, who has already made over $200 million during his pro career, comes off his salary demand, he may have to turn to \u201cNBA 2K\u201d to find his next team instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben Simmons may be overplaying his hand in free agency. The former NBA All-Star forward Simmons is seeking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,15607,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-109573","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-ben-simmons","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}