If you are sick and tired of hearing about the Ben Simmons situation, you can only imagine what the stakeholders on the Nets must be feeling.
NBA insider Brian Windhorst, speaking on ESPN’s “Get Up” on Monday, said that Simmons is not a “sympathetic figure” due to the choices he’s made this season, and laid out the Nets’ fatigue with his decision to sit out Game 4 with what he has attributed to back pain popping back up.
“Your immediate reaction is he just doesn’t want to play in a series that’s 3-0. I’ll be honest with you — that was my first reaction,” Windhorst said.
“When I talked to people involved, they were exasperated. They said he woke up, his back hurt and he wasn’t able to play. There wasn’t much more to say. They’re pretty much waving the white flag on this one. It’s extraordinarily disappointing.”
He said that the Nets were “clinging” to optimism that Simmons could be a difference-maker after the first two games in Boston were so close, and that Simmons himself had been very positive on the idea of playing for the previous 5-6 days.
“To have that ripped away — extremely upsetting,” Windhorst said.
The segment had begun with a clip of Stephen A. Smith speaking on ESPN’s NBA playoff studio show from over the weekend, saying that rules were going to be changed in the next Collective Bargaining Agreement after what we’ve seen from Simmons and his Nets teammate Kyrie Irving this season with regards to games played — or not played.
Smith continued harping on Simmons on Monday’s edition of “First Take”, saying that he “might also be the weakest, most pathetic excuse for a professional athlete we’ve ever seen in not just American history but the history of sport.”
Unless the Nets mount a miraculous comeback from down 3-0 against the Celtics, we are going to be treated to a long offseason of commentary about how they squandered their considerable talent, and what, if anything, they can do to retool for next year.