After 16 Months Ben Simmons Will Officially Make His Return To Basketball Tonight Against The Sixers
Elsa. Getty Images.
Advertisement
You know what name you don't see on that injury report? Ben Simmons. You know what that means? That for the first time since June 20, 2021, a total of 470 days, Ben Simmons will be playing basketball and it just so happens to be coming against the Sixers. You should know that this game is taking place in Brooklyn so it's not exactly a "return" for Simmons where he's going to have to deal with the Philly crowd and all that, but it's still going to be awesome to see him active and actually play against his former teammates.
Last year when there was speculation of when Simmons would come back I think we all looked at the schedule to see when the Nets played the Sixers, probably because he talked about it the second he was traded to BKN
As we know, Ben Simmons did not play in that game or any games as a Brooklyn Net last year. And even though tonight will be preseason and I imagine a lot fo the main players for both sides will be on a minutes restriction, it should still provide us a good amount of drama. If this game was in Philly, who knows is Simmons plays, even though he's going to have to face that demon eventually with the Sixers and Nets being in the same division. You can't run from that crowd forever, at some point you need to go out and show them what they're missing.
Aside from the Sixers connection, I'm mostly intrigued to see how the fit looks with the trio of Kyrie/KD/Simmons. Given that we saw a total of zero (0) minutes of it last year, I'm definitely still curious to see how it all works. Will Kyrie still be the primary ball handler or will they move him to more of an off ball role and let Simmons do the initiating of the offense? Does he singlehandedly fix their perimeter defense issues that plagued them in their 4 game sweep last Spring? Will Steve Nash use Simmons at the 5 to help negate his unwillingness to shoot? Will Simmons decide to troll all the Sixers and their fans by doing nothing but taking jumpers?
I know we all should be rational and not put too much stock into preseason basketball, but I'm guessing it's going to be hard to do that when it comes to however Simmons looks tonight. If he struggles, do you think Philly fans are going to just let that slide? If he looks awesome, you don't think Nets fans are going to talk shit? That's sports, baby.
Advertisement
It's been so long since we've seen Ben Simmons play that it's only natural to sort of forget how good he can be. He's also shown to be an extremely flawed played that you can easily scheme against. Now healthy, rested, and with a new team it'll be interesting to see if there's been any progress in the areas that always seemed to plague him. The future of the Nets kind of depends on it if you ask me.