{"id":693298,"date":"2026-05-25T10:19:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T10:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/693298\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T10:19:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T10:19:11","slug":"simmons-harbours-olympic-goal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/693298\/","title":{"rendered":"Simmons harbours ‘Olympic goal’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The next two years of the world basketball calendar are as busy as it gets, with the World Cup in 2027 followed by the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.<\/p>\n

While many names are constantly thrown into the mix to play for the Boomers, Ben Simmons looks set to put his hand up to represent his country for the first time in 15 years.<\/p>\n

“Believe it or not, he wants to wear it and I think the Olympics is kind of his goal,” Boomers assistant and Simmons\u2019 godfather Dave Patrick said on basketball.com.au’s Cut to the Jase<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I think as he’s got older and matured like all of us do, I think that’s one thing he hasn’t ticked off the box, playing for his country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe played in the youth level, but it’s nothing like playing with the Boomers.<\/p>\n

“So I think he’s on track to trying to get healthy mentally and physically, and I think it’s something that he will try to do moving forward.<\/p>\n

“It’d be an exciting time to hopefully try to get him into LA, but there’s some steps in place when you’ve been out for the year that he has been.”<\/p>\n

Simmons name surfaced in recent weeks, with former NBL Champion Damon Lowery, calling for the three-time NBA All-Star to find a home in the Hungry Jack\u2019s competition<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat if a healthy Ben Simmons showed up in NBL27?” Lowery said.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan you imagine? It would be carnage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho going to guard to Him? Because he could guard everyone.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe would win MVP and Defensive Player of the Year in the same year.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 29-year-old former Rookie of the Year, who played 4422 NBA games during his career, is currently focusing on getting back to full health, after a serious back injury during his time with the Brooklyn Nets and Los Angeles Clippers.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The next two years of the world basketball calendar are as busy as it gets, with the World…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":693299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-693298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693298","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=693298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/693299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}