Niang said on a podcast.<\/a> \u201cAnd then he was like, \u2018I\u2019m not playing\u2019 and I\u2019m like, what the (expletive). I\u2019m like, \u2018How the (expletive) am I going to make something happen?\u2019 And then he was walking around the facility, and they\u2019d be like, \u2018What\u2019s up, man?\u2019 trying to welcome him back, and he\u2019d be like, (nods), and that\u2019s when I was like (expletive) this dude.\u201d<\/p>\nAdvertisement<\/p>\n
But Simmons was torpedoing his own ships\u2019 hulls before that.<\/p>\n
Everyone ignored warning signs from the beginning. LSU underachieved in his only season there. They started in the preseason top 25 and missed the NCAA Tournament. Because Simmons\u2019 numbers were good, coach Johnny Jones got the blame for the failure.<\/p>\n
But the season established two things that that been the through lines of Simmons\u2019 career. He doesn\u2019t make his teammates better and he doesn\u2019t really appear to like basketball all that much.<\/p>\n
The Sixers weren\u2019t scared. They took him No. 1 overall in the 2016 NBA Draft and planned their future around him. He was at the heart of The Process that the Sixers were asking their fans to trust.<\/p>\n
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That wasn\u2019t their failure. He was the consensus, no-debate top pick. Every team in the NBA would have done the same thing.<\/p>\n
It could have been the Celtics, who were in the lottery that year and turned out to be lucky not to win it. Boston picked Jaylen Brown, a franchise cornerstone and future NBA Finals MVP at No. 3 and the Sixers got six years of a franchise-denting headache and had to pay him $78,465,475 to endure that.<\/p>\n
Given the enormous hype that accompanied his arrival, Simmons will go down as one of the most disappointing picks of all time.<\/p>\n
After sitting out his first season with an injury, he was the rookie of the year in 2017-18 and All-NBA in 2019-20. But things cratered fast. He held out to open 2021-22 before the Sixers eventually traded him to Brooklyn.<\/p>\n
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The Nets have wasted a decade trying to cut corners with failed get-rich-quick schemes designed to avoid a rebuilding process. They\u2019ve added aging superstars or talented but problematic players in hopes that adding the correct combinations of wrongs together could, in fact, make a right.<\/p>\n
They paid Simmons $123,789,153 to prove that wrong. That\u2019s $211,000 per point that he scored for them.<\/p>\n
The Nets had zero postseason wins during that stretch. Simmons was on the roster for two playoff series, but was injured for two first-round sweeps by the Celtics and Sixers.<\/p>\n
The Nets bought him out last year. The Clippers, who have been good at turning other teams\u2019 buyouts (Russell Westbrook, Reggie Jackson) into good players again, couldn\u2019t do the same in a half season with Simmons.<\/p>\n
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Someone will sign him. Somebody will think they\u2019re one with a magic skeleton key system and culture that will turn Simmons into the superstar he was supposed to be.<\/p>\n
But history says they\u2019re wrong. Simmons will aggravate his coach, frustrate his teammates and enrage the fans.<\/p>\n
Let him do that somewhere else.<\/p>\n
More Matt Vautour Columns<\/p>\n
Read the original article on MassLive<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t do it. The Celtics should forget they even thought about it. Pretend they were joking. Run. Don\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[5551,64,63,726,15607,483,7187,6554,2870,10225,15611,7321,15608,15610,7230,7217,12845,12833,15609,10113,9687,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-14195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-al-horford","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-basketball","12":"tag-ben-simmons","13":"tag-boston","14":"tag-brooklyn","15":"tag-caitlin-clark","16":"tag-celtics","17":"tag-clippers","18":"tag-connecticut-sun","19":"tag-eastern-conference","20":"tag-georges-niang","21":"tag-jaylen-brown","22":"tag-jayson-tatum","23":"tag-jrue-holiday","24":"tag-knicks","25":"tag-kristaps-porzingis","26":"tag-luke-kornet","27":"tag-russell-westbrook","28":"tag-sixers","29":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14195","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=14195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}