Basketball great Charles Barkley says Ben Simmons isn’t the only one to blame in the “stupid” and “silly” feud that’s landed the Aussie a ban by the Philadelphia 76ers.
The ugly situation came to a head on Wednesday morning (AEDT) when 76ers coach Doc Rivers announced he had suspended Simmons for the opening game of the NBA season.
That followed Rivers telling his superstar to leave training when Simmons reportedly refused to participate in drills. He has also been fined $1.4 million for missing a number of pre-season games.
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Simmons will miss Philadelphia’s season opener against the Pelicans on Thursday (AEDT) but, at this stage, he will be available for Saturday’s game against the Nets.
Whether he ends up pulling on a Sixers jersey again at all remains to be seen.
Barkley – the 1993 NBA MVP – is mightily unimpressed with the entire circus.
“It’s a joke, it’s stupid and it’s silly,” he told TNT during day one of the NBA season.
“First of all it’s everybody’s fault. Ben Simmons deserves number one the blame, because when people ask you to be a better basketball player, and they’re paying 35, $40 million, that’s a very fair thing.
“The Sixers deserve some blame because they already let this guy not improve and get one coach fired, so they deserve some blame for that. They threw (former Sixers coach) Brett Brown under the bus.
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“The third thing is Doc Rivers… we had him on here, (he said) ‘you guys want me to take Ben Simmons out of the game’… yeah, we do. If he’s just going to stand around and not shoot the basketball yes we do (want him out).
“So there’s plenty of blame to go around, but the number one blame goes with Ben Simmons.
“You should want to be a better basketball player because that’s your profession. That’s your job.
“Your coach is important, your mum and dad is important, but I wanted to be a great basketball player for myself.”