Philadelphia scandal: Doc Rivers fires Ben Simmons

And the bomb exploded. In the worst possible way and when it seemed that the situation was beginning to straighten out. After endless rumors, a change of opinion, forced situations and transfer attempts by both parties, Bem Simmons was back in training with the Sixers. And just a few hours before the curtain opens on the NBA’s 2021-22 basketball course, Adrian Wojnarowski has revealed that Dic Rivers, the team’s coach, has expelled the base from a training session and sent him home. In short, a brutality and a disaster of epic dimensions that turns the Philadelphia franchise upside down and with the future hanging by a thread.

The situation has definitely turned ignominious and is seriously damaging the player’s reputation. According to the revelations of different journalists linked to the NBA, the problem was that Simmons refused to take part in a training exercise, prompting Rivers’ decision. According to Shams Charania, the chain of events was as follows: Rivers asked Simmons to join a defensive exercise. The point guard refused. After the insistence of the technician, the base again refused. Rivers, at this, told Simmons that he should go home. The Australian dropped the ball and walked away.

The situation is almost shameful for the entire entity,bsolutely dynamited by a player with an excessive contract (the famous 177 million in five seasons that he signed in his day) which they have not been able to transfer after the player’s insistence and the franchise’s own wishes. The incorporation to the training of the base has not gone as planned and in the filtered images everything has been seen: reluctance on his part, a huddle that does not enter, a certain disconnection … And it is still striking that even a players coach like Doc Rivers, always attentive and friendly with his pupils, you can control the excesses of that coming star unless he has caused a real earthquake in the NBA in recent months.

For now, Simmons will have an internal sanction and will be a game out of the team. And the way it fits in a culture that has been his will continue to be studied, but from which it has ended up totally detached, reviled by external criticism and the franchise itself and singled out as the scapegoat for a success that the Sixers, who have not played in the conference finals since 2001, have not even smelled. “It was a distraction for training“, has assured a Doc Rivers that he will try, as he has said, to recover Simmons for the cause by all possible means. Joel Embiid, absolutely fed up with the situation for several weeks, has been clearer. And also blunt: “We are not to take care of anyone“Well that.