Dropping today, here is Ben Simmons’ ESPN The Magazine profile. It’s stocked with insidery bits about Team Simmons – I need my NBA stars to have their own Teams, Camps, Circles – and worth your time, but I especially enjoy this part about Simmons’ already expensive tastes:

As soon as Simmons left LSU in March, he began trying to manage his grown-up life. He already has money coming in from sponsorship deals with Upper Deck and Beats. He’s not worried that money might change him. “I don’t need to buy people things, I don’t need to buy houses, I’m not like that,” he says, “just because I know it can be taken away from you like that.” He continues, “I don’t think much will change besides — I mean, attention, of course; that will change. But me as a person, you know, I’ll do the same things.”

And yet for someone so focused on adhering to his own plan, Ben’s day-to-day life is already dictated by the circle around him. Rich arranged an apartment in Cleveland for him to live with Sean and Cisco while he trains in daily workout sessions organized by Klutch. He was supplied with a personal chef who helped him get from 225 to what he is now, 240, and who helps keep him there.

He met with stylist Wesmore Perriott and his business partner, who helped parlay his loungewear leanings into GQ cover material. Emily introduced him to her husband’s financial adviser, who in turn introduced him to a jeweler who sold him a gold Rolex, which he’d wanted because he always saw his father wearing a nice watch, and it meant a lot for him to be able to buy one of his own.

Simmons found a jeweler who custom-made him a diamond-spangled flag-of-Australia necklace. On a May trip to LA, where they were taking meetings with Adidas (they’d also met with Nike in Portland — he later signed a contract with the Swoosh), Fara introduced him to a jeweler who sold him two hamsas — the symbolic hands of God. They’re also diamond-crusted, and they’re nearly the same size and chain length, meant to be worn together. The woman blessed them, and when Ben showed them to me while he was getting his makeup done for ESPN’s photo shoot, he said the woman told him the hamsas were a symbol of God looking out for him. And here is when I taught him something else: I told him that wasn’t entirely true; hamsas were also a symbol to ward off the evil eye. But it didn’t matter. Ben isn’t superstitious. He feels that right now, all along and forever more, what happens next is in his control.

Baller.

Simmons is 19, yet-to-be-drafted, and already has developed exotic taste for diamond-encrusted keepsakes given meaning by eccentric jewelers. We may be only two years away from him turning his first name into a letter and punctuation mark. B} And you know what? I love it. For far too long, I’ve had to blog about literal shit when it came to the Sixers– fucking Evan Turner and Jrue Holiday and Andrew Bynum and Adam Goofball Aron and Richie Rich Owner and Mascots and other assorted Bullshit. Finally, some flashiness that may actually be deserved. I, for one, can’t wait for the Superstar Simmons Era.

Read the story.

Side note: The anecdote about him not playing NBA 2k until he’s in the game is fucking perfect. That’s the sort of egotistical maniac I want to root for.

Side note 2: Yes I’m fully aware that I criticized LeBron for the same sort of maniacal narcissism. But you know what? He just won an NBA Championship. If that’s what it takes, so be it.