Ben Simmons Is Reportedly Putting His NBA Return "On Hold" So He Can Focus On Pro Fishing

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Remember Ben Simmons? What a polarizing player and honestly one of the craziest careers in recent memory when you take a step back and look at the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows. What a ride. 

Before the season, we got reports about how he turned down potential roster spots and camp invites because they were mostly minimum/non-guaranteed deals, most notably with the Knicks. Whoops! Outside of that, the NBA has moved on, and you don't really hear about teams fighting one another to get into the Ben Simmons business. He just sort of, disappeared.

As it turns out, Simmons has apparently been up to something other than basketball

I'll be honest, when I saw the headline 

"Ben Simmons putting the NBA on hold to pursue pro fishing"

come across my timeline, I thought it was just NBACentel up to their usual tricks. The way that reads, it's pretty funny. Sure once you dig a little deeper it's actually an ownership stake thing, but it's still funny. In terms of the NBA, I'm not sure Simmons is the one who is putting his potential return "on hold". The NBA has put it on hold….for the foreseeable future. If there were a market for Simmons, my guess is he'd be on an NBA roster at this point. As he said in the interview, if a team was interested, he'd be on a roster if it was the right situation.

What you won't find me doing in this blog is dogging Simmons for this move. In fact, I'd argue he's lived about as elite a life as humanly possible. He's not even 30 yet and already secured over $270M in basketball contract money alone. He got to play in the NBA for a handful of years and walked away healthy (for the most part). He can do literally whatever the hell he wants for the rest of his life. That's the dream, isn't it? Hate on the guy as a basketball player and what he did between the lines and some of his limitations as a player, fine. But Ben Simmons has a pretty sick life when you think about it. 

Would you go through everything he went through as an NBA player to be set for life at 29 with hundreds of millions in the bank and the ability to do whatever you want? My guess is yes! So he won't go into the Basketball HOF and may be clowned on the internet for the rest of time. Oh well. Something tells me he'll be able to get over it and you know what? Good for Ben Simmons. 

With his combination of size and speed, there's a part of me that does want to see Simmons get fully healthy and be in the league again. I know how crazy that sounds, but there has to still be a decent enough player left in there somewhere

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With the increase in pace, more and more teams playing small, in theory Ben Simmons should be an intriguing option given his skillset. It's just never shown to be that way in reality since his Sixers days. Some flashes here and there as a Net, so if he can give a team the Nets' level production off the bench while staying healthy, is that worth a roster spot to someone? We'll see. 

He is back with Rich Paul and Klutch, so at the very least we should pencil him in as a future Laker.