The Philadelphia 76ers and All-Star guard Ben Simmons have come to some type of reconciliation as the embattled star returned to Philadelphia on Monday after sitting out all of training camp and three preseason games.
Simmons wants to be traded after a poor playoff performance and ensuing tumultuous offseason. He received a ton of criticism for it after shooting 34.2% from the foul line and passing up a dunk in a Game 7 loss that ended the Sixers season in the second round of the playoffs. At this point, he might be better off elsewhere in order to rebuild his confidence and move forward.
That is why, despite his return to the Sixers, Simmons still wants to be traded, and ESPN’s Stephen A. Smtih explained why on First Take:
At the end of the day, here’s what it comes down to. He’s back with the team, but he’s still hell bent on being moved, being traded. The mentality is that in order to get that, you got to maintain or elevate your market value. The longer you stay away, the worse you look. Not only are you use losing money; your cache is diminishing. The team can’t get equitable compensation in return for your services because they’ll be moving you for 20 cents on the dollar. They’re not willing to do that plus you’re hurting your status, and your cache. Now people in Philadelphia and stuff like that, he’s gonna take some heat. Ben Simmons needs to understand why he’s going to take major heat from Philadelphia. You’re the one that messed up hitting only 34% of your free throws in the postseason in a seven-game series loss to the Atlanta Hawks. … Philadelphia is not maligning Ben Simmons because he played bad. Philadelphia is maligning Ben Simmons because you came across like you blaming us for what you did. When in actuality, all we’ve done is support you all of these years. So that’s where vitriol from the city of Philadelphia is going to come from.
The Sixers have one more preseason game on Friday against the Detroit Pistons before opening the season on Oct. 20. It will be interesting to see if Simmons reports to practice and actually plays in order to boost his trade value or he fakes an injury and tries to get out of playing for the organization.
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