Ben Simmons and the heavy burden of unfulfilled promise

Despite the hatred the Australian attracts, there’s still an air of expectation that hovers around him even as his career continues to stall

When Australia launch their Fiba World Cup campaign against Finland on Friday, 10 years since Ben Simmons’s last two appearances with the Boomers, they will at last be led by a tall point guard with freakish ball handling skills who’s been hailed as a “generational talent”. But it will be Josh Giddey – 6ft 8in, 20 years old, fresh from two stellar opening seasons with Oklahoma City, and the youngest player in NBA history to score a triple double – running the Boomers’ offense. Simmons – 6ft 10in, 27, beset by repeated physical and mental setbacks, and the most fined NBA player of all time – will miss the World Cup to recover from a nerve impingement in his back.

Giddey represents the future of Australian basketball. Simmons was the future once, but increasingly it seems he is the past – a past that promised so much and delivered only in fits and starts. In his five full (or full-ish) seasons in the NBA, Simmons has shown all the versatility and durability that was expected of him when he emerged with Louisiana State University: but as a meme rather than as a player. There have been, to be fair, glimpses of the talent that saw the 76ers make him the No 1 overall pick in the 2016 draft: the falcon-like court vision, the power under the boards, that godly passing range and rolling, liquid comfort with the ball in hand. But Simmons has missed two full seasons: the first in 2016-17 thanks to injury, and the second, in 2021-22, owing to a combination of injury and the breakdown of his relationship with 76ers management. Since he was traded to the Nets in early 2022, Simmons has spent most of his time in the treatment room, surrounded by accusations that he is simply too weak for the NBA, a quitter. He earned $35m last season but started on the bench towards the end of 2022-23 before being shut down due to injury.

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