Ben Simmons' season is over, and it's time for Nets to move on for good
Nets guard Ben Simmons looks on from the bench in the first half of an NBA game against the Hawks at Barclays Center on Saturday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
DETROIT
It’s time to move on.
It’s time to accept that Ben Simmons may have played his last game as a Net. It’s time to concede that the team is never going to see the incredible and versatile defender and playmaker that Simmons was early in his career. It’s time to accept that the James Harden-for-Simmons trade in February 2022 was not only one of the worst deals in Nets history but one of the worst deals in the league in the past five years.
The Nets, who are fighting for the Eastern Conference’s final play-in spot, announced Thursday that Simmons will miss the rest of the season because of his ongoing back issues. Simmons, along with his agent and the Nets’ medical personnel, are talking with a number of medical experts and exploring treatment options for the nerve impingement in his lower back.
Raise your hand if you’ve seen this movie before and didn’t like the ending. How many clips have you seen of reporters over the last two years questioning Nets coach after Nets coach about the status of Simmons’ back and how close he was to getting back?
Simmons has played in only 15 games this season. After he misses the final 20, he will have played in 57 of a possible 191 games as a Net, with most of his absences having to do with back problems.
The highest-paid player on the team, Simmons is making $37.9 million this season, which means he earned a little more than $2.5 million per game. And he’s due to make a lot more, whether he plays or not, as he has a $40.3 million expiring contract for the 2024-25 season.
Meanwhile, over on the West Coast with the Clippers, Harden has reinvented himself again and has a chance to go much deeper in the playoffs than he believed he could with the Nets, even when Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant were on the team.
There are so many questions that remain about Harden’s exit from the Nets. Why couldn’t general manager Sean Marks get something better for an All-Star in Harden? Why, when Harden was complaining in January to everyone about former coach Steve Nash’s rotations and Irving’s refusal to take the COVID-19 vaccine, did Marks not listen so he didn’t have to scramble to make a trade days before the deadline? Just how closely did the Nets examine Simmons’ back? Were they so enamored of his potential that they ignored a red flag or two?
The big question mark concerning Simmons when he came to the Nets wasn’t his back; it was his mental health and whether he would be able to overcome being called out by then-Philadelphia coach Doc Rivers after a rough playoff performance in 2021.
His back was mentioned only in passing until five weeks after he was traded, when, even before Simmons practiced with the team, Nash revealed to reporters that he had a herniated disc.
Between that revelation and Thursday has been a nearly two-year roller coaster that included back surgery, missed game after missed game and nonstop conjecture about when Simmons finally would get healthy.
No one on the Nets was making any predictions Thursday.
“I’m not going to speculate on that,” interim coach Kevin Ollie said. “I just pray he can come back healthy and whatever God has for him and his rehab. I want him to have faith that he can come back and be the Ben Simmons we know he can be.
“We can’t speculate on what’s going to happen in the future or regret what happened in the past. The only thing we can stay in is now and understand he is going through something that is challenging.”
Challenging and more than a bit sad for anyone who can remember the way Simmons burst into the league in the 2017-18 season, winning Rookie of the Year honors and wowing almost everyone with his defense and playmaking.
Yes, Simmons’ tenure with the Nets showed flashes of that play. But it looks as if he will be remembered more for his fashion style on the bench than his style on the court.
Painful as it is, it’s time to move on.
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
