The Australian guard was compared to LeBron James when the 76ers drafted him No 1 overall in 2016. But an ugly divorce between team and player awaits
Philadelphia woke up on Monday to the grim news of another homicide, this one a fatal shooting of a nurse at a hospital. The shooting raised the number of homicides in the city to 418, the most by this point of the year since 1986. Philadelphia, in short, has much more important things to worry about than its status as the city where Ben Simmons shoots, or refuses to shoot, a basketball.
And yet he remains headline news. The 25-year-old Philadelphia 76ers guard is not reporting to the team until he gets traded – and Philadelphia’s notoriously passionate fans are not happy. Just two years ago, he signed a five-year, $177m contract extension, tweeting at the time, “Philly means so much to me.”
