It’s time for NBA Commissioner Adam Silver to step in on the issues between the Philadelphia 76ers and Ben Simmons.
This whole saga between Ben Simmons and the Philadelphia 76ers highlights the biggest issue the NBA is facing right now or has dealt with in years.
Superstars are not honoring a legal contract they signed to play for a team. If that is not enough of an absolute joke, it keeps happening season after season and it’s only getting worse.
Anthony Davis, a Rich Paul client, forced a trade to the Los Angeles Lakers with one year left on his contract. James Harden forced a trade to the Brooklyn Nets with two years left on his deal.
Now, Simmons, another Paul client, is the latest diva trying to do the same, only he has four years left on his deal.
Commissioner Adam Silver needs to do something about this matter because it’s a horrible look for the NBA. Fortunately, the 76ers have a lot of things on their side to help reduce the likelihood that it will be strong-armed as well.
Daryl Morey, president of basketball operations for the franchise, is smart as a whip and empowered in his position.
Franchise player Joel Embiid has recently gone on record to say he won’t put any pressure on the organization to make a trade for Simmons.
Finally! A man with reason!
Because there has been a growing number of people in the media that argue the 76ers should trade Simmons as soon as possible to stop wasting away Embiid’s prime.
Ask yourself-does that make any sense at all?!
If the 76ers couldn’t make it out of the east with Simmons on its roster, how could it expect to help Embiid and company get over the hump by trading him off for 25 cents on the dollar?
Those same fools who argue that the 76ers should trade Simmons immediately also defend his camp for feeling justified to not honor his contract, sit out the season and be a complete jerk (or would crybaby be more appropriate) just because Doc Rivers and Joel Embiid indirectly came at him coming off the 76ers elimination in last year’s playoffs.
How can Simmons expect his coach or the best player on the team to come to his defense when he was so petrified to take a shot that he didn’t even take an uncontested layup?
He finished Game 7 of that series with just five points! He shot 25-for-73 from the free-throw line in the playoffs, which is, by the way, among the worst percentages in NBA postseason history!
He wasn’t bad.
He wasn’t terrible.
No…
He was so GOD AWFUL that he probably wants to erase any evidence of what happened from his memory the same way Chris Webber did when he called his infamous timeout near the end of the 1993 NCAA championship game.
In everyone’s heart of hearts, we all know that’s the real reason he wants to get out of town.
Simmons quit on himself in that series against the Atlanta Hawks and he is compounding the problem by quitting on the team.
This stalemate has been going on since before the season even began and shows no signs of ending soon.
That is why Commissioner Adam Silver needs to intervene.
The player empowerment era should be renamed the player abuse of power era.
The only thing that has come to light from it is that players have been acting like little, spoiled divas who cry and whine when any type of criticism or setback comes their way.
To reiterate, it’s a HORRIBLE look for the league and is as big a problem as any in all of sports right now.
What is the solution? It’s hard to say.
Maybe Silver needs to threaten to kick Simmons out of the league if he continues to sit out the season and fail to honor his LEGAL contract.
Maybe he needs to set an informal agreement in place among all the teams in the league to blackball any Rich Paul clients until Paul relives himself as an agent since he has been implementing this strategy more so than any other agent.
The answer is unclear.
But this is a problem that is going to continue until the people who are supposed to be running the league do something to stop it.
That should be the short-term goal.
The long-term goal should be putting an end to the player abuse of power era that currently exists.
There has been only one good thing that has come from “player empowerment” and it was the decision of the Milwaukee Bucks—and all other teams subsequently— to sit out a playoff game as a show of solidarity and protest to the reprehensible police shooting of Jacob Blake during the bubble.
Everything else has been a travesty.
The idea of player empowerment that underscored super-teams being formed was just a shortcut for superstars to win championships by teaming up with each other and absolutely crap on the competitive landscape of the league.
The keyword in that whole sentence was shortcut, which was the same sentiment Giannis used last year in distinguishing his journey to win a championship compared to the likes of other superstars such as LeBron James and Kevin Durant.
And the idea of players being able to force trades and not honor a LEGAL contract is just upping the ante of that abuse of power.
Previous NBA commissioner David Stern earned the reputation as being one of the greatest commissioners in sports history because he not only helped grow the game to become global in popularity but also had the balls to police the players and owners in it.
It’s time Adam Silver stopped acting as soft as some of these diva superstars and took this issue to task.
And it would be a nice start if he told Ben Simmons to put back on his diaper and go play some basketball again before him and/or his agent face real serious repercussions.