NBA Rumors: Brooklyn Nets already turned off by Ben Simmons?
NBA Rumors: Are the Brooklyn Nets already disappointed with Ben Simmons?
With their backs against the wall in the NBA Playoffs, the hope was that Ben Simmons would be making his season debut for the team Monday night. After what appears to be another setback, Simmons will not indeed play in Game 4 against the Boston Celtics and it seems that the first time that we’ll see Simmons playing for the Brooklyn Nets will be during the 2022-23 NBA season.
According to ESPN, there are some in the Nets organization that are “surprised and disappointed” that Simmons will not be making his debut for the team in Game 4 against the Celtics.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Nets are frustrated with Simmons, assuming there’s any sense of accuracy in this report. After all, Brooklyn was essentially forced to trade James Harden, and acquiring Simmons was the best-case scenario for their circumstances.
Even though Simmons had not played in a game this season, the hope was that he would be ready to suit up for the Nets a few weeks after the trade happened. Those few weeks turned into a month and that turned into a couple of months, and now he likely will not have played at all this season.
On one hand, the Harden trade was always about the potential future ceiling that Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant, and Simmons could give you. However, the expectation (at least internally, it seems) was that Simmons would be ready to play for the Nets at some point this season.
That never happened and it seems like the Nets, who are facing a 3-0 first-round NBA Playoff deficit against the Celtics, are annoyed that they essentially traded Harden for Andre Drummond and Seth Curry.
Another year of Durant’s prime is lost and with Kyrie possibly being a free agent after the season, there’s a chance the Nets could have some major roster turnover this summer.
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I’m not sure if a healthy or rusty Ben Simmons makes much of a difference for the Nets against the Celtics. But not even having the option of seeing that through has to be extremely frustrating for a team that had championship aspirations.