The GOAT Doris Burke Just Buried Ben Simmons Calling Him “Shattered, Defiant and Borderline Arrogant”
When Steven A came off the top rope the other day about Ben Simmons, the internet went crazy.
I mean, that’s a damning text, and people were like, oh man it can’t get any worse for Ben Simmons. This is as bad as it gets.
Ben Simmons’ stock couldn’t get any lower, right?
Guess again.
Enter Doris Burke, maybe the most level-headed and beloved NBA media member. The woman Dave Portnoy loves more than he loves tanning, watermelon, and Reduced Fat Cheez-Its.
I can’t ever remember Doris going in on a player at any length until she got on the subject of Ben on the latest episode of Brian Windhorst’s podcast.
Few people have had a better view of the situation than Doris and here is her appraisal of Ben Simmons:
[I was] terribly uncomfortable for a young man in Ben Simmons who is clearly SHATTERED in terms of his confidence, and my second reaction? It is a defining moment. Does it become a defining moment in the mind of Ben Simmons?
A defining moment. Yikes. She continued:
Because despite playoff failures where he wasn’t simply good enough either in ‘18 or ‘19, hurt last year in the bubble, and [yet] he remained defiant. I would say (and I would use this word carefully) defiant, certainly, and with the borderline arrogance that a great athlete needs to have in reaction to questions as to whether his game is good enough or whether his game hurts his team.
Defiant and arrogant, which is pretty much what’s now coming out about Ben and how the Sixers coddled and protected him since he got in the NBA. Doris further noted:
This should be a defining moment. It may be a defining moment for the Sixers organization. I was certainly surprised that Doc’s reaction wasn’t a little bit more tempered but I would throw it back and say as uncomfortable as that was, as BRUTAL as it was to watch for an individual to experience that level of being so unconfident in his abilities. I wonder if it can propel him forward.
Outside of “The Pass” she noted that the play that most stuck out to her in relation to how absolutely broken Ben was, was this:
They’re in transition and he doesn't have much space between he and Joel. They’re both at halfcourt and they’ve got a little pace. All he has to do is go behind his back, gain a little separation from Joel, who if Joel rim runs to front of the rim, something good is going to happen but his confidence was at such a low that he passes it to his 7’ 240 lb center with very little spacing and says “you decide what to do with the ball” and I’m like ‘oh my god where have we gotten to in terms of where he is mentally,’ I’m telling you it was hard to watch.
This is not a hater. This is not someone who is looking for clicks. This is someone genuinely beloved in the NBA community and respected as much as anyone for her knowledge of the game, and she found it “hard to watch” Ben Simmons in the Playoffs this year. And not just because he missed so many free throws (all time worst in the playoffs), not because he didn't shoot in the fourth quarter of the last four games of the Hawks series, and not because he passed up an open dunk because he was so afraid of getting fouled.
What was hard to watch was how much his game has genuinely regressed.
Doris also went on to say how her mind was in a pretzel as to what his trade value currently was and that the Sixers greatest chance to up his value was to persuade him to play for Team Australia in the Tokyo Olympics. Of course, because it’s Ben Simmons, he recently announced he is not going to play for Team Australia to “work on developing his skills”.
Wow.
Ben Simmons will get traded, but like Kemba Walker, is he a negative asset now? We’ll explore that later.
We talked at length about Ben in the last episode of THIS LEAGUE, make sure to watch on Youtube or listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.