Sixers

Ben Simmons Officially Shut Down for the Season

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Mar 28th, 2023 · 1:44 PM EDT

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Official:

The Nets are shutting down Ben Simmons for the rest of the season, head coach Jacque Vaughn announced. pic.twitter.com/AWkeZrdK75

— ESPN (@espn) March 28, 2023

Ben’s final stats for the year:

• 42 games
• 33 starts
• 26.3 minutes per game
• 5.6 field goal attempts per
• 0-2 from three (I think both were heaves)
• 43.9% from the foul line on 1.4 attempts per game
• 6.9 PPG
• 6.3 RPG
• 6.1 APG
• 2.3 turnovers per game

A wretched season for Ben after not playing at all last year. He split with his fiance, he’s no longer with Klutch, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant were traded, and now he’s dealing with a nerve impingement in his back.

What happens next? This is probably it for Ben. If he can’t get healthy over the spring and summer and figure it out, then we’re talking Guangzhou Loong Lions here, or maybe he joins FaZe Clan and becomes a professional Fortnite player. At the risk of sounding like a dickhead, Ben did a lot of this to himself. This guy was gifted with incredible athleticism and a fortuitous situation and then just totally fell apart. All anyone asked him to do was shoot the fucking basketball. He was already borderline elite at everything else. It was never rocket science.