Ben Simmons Is Apparently Mad Joel Embiid Blamed Him Last Year When Simmons Didn’t Blame Embiid In 2019

The Philadelphia 76ers are currently third in the East at 31-19 on the season, just a half-game back of the Bulls and Heat for first in the conference. It is an impressive feat for a team that has played all 50 games thus far without a player who occupies $33 million of their salary cap this year, as Ben Simmons’ holdout continues on with the trade deadline less than two weeks away.

The general consensus seems to be that it’s more likely than not that Simmons is still on the Sixers roster once the February 10 trade deadline comes and goes, as Daryl Morey is intent on still getting star return for Simmons and the market has cooled as the Sixers asking price has remained incredibly high. Things can change in 10 days, but as of this moment, there isn’t an awful lot of optimism about a resolution to the current situation in Philly coming any time soon.

As such, we are provided seemingly daily updates about the stalemate between Simmons and the Sixers, where neither party is blameless for the situation they find themselves in, or the fact that reconciliation is just about impossible at this point. The latest from the Simmons camp comes from ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne, who published a lengthy piece on Tuesday about how Simmons has been approaching the last few months and spoke with some close to the star about how it got to this point.

The most interesting tidbits in the piece are insights into specifics of Simmons’ frustration, including thinking Doc Rivers and the Sixers could have done more to visit him in L.A. even though he was not returning calls or texts. There’s also a nugget about his frustration with Joel Embiid’s comments after last year’s loss to the Hawks, in which the star big man called out Simmons’ refusal to take a late layup, that notes Simmons was upset by that because he felt he could’ve done the same to Embiid in 2019 after the loss to the Raptors in the playoffs but didn’t.

According to sources close to Simmons, he’s upset that Embiid seemed to blame him for last season’s playoff loss, when Simmons did not blame Embiid for Embiid’s poor showing in the playoffs against the Toronto Raptors in 2019.

That passage raised a lot of eyebrows because, while Embiid did struggle with his efficiency in the Toronto series (he shot just 37 percent from the field in that series), he was playing through a meniscus tear and had to get IV fluids before games in the Raptors series due to illness. And still, despite a generally poor shooting performance and questionable health, he was the most impactful Sixer in terms of dictating team success in that series, as Philly was a +90 in his minutes on the court during the series (only Jimmy Butler was also a positive throughout the 7-game series).

In fairness to Simmons, in the Atlanta series a year ago, Philly was a +29 when he was on the court and a -9 in non-Simmons minutes. Still, you’d be hard pressed to find many others who would pin much on Embiid for that 2019 exit, and Simmons’ free throw issues and reluctance to even attempt to score were front and center in the biggest moment of that Hawks series.

If anything, this latest round of reporting only further cements the fact that there isn’t a path forward to reconciliation for Simmons and the Sixers, if for no other reason than it’s clear that he and Joel Embiid, for however complementary their games are, are not able or willing to coexist at the moment. Embiid fully embraced the Jimmy Butler Method of leadership, in which you push buttons and publicly motivate (or criticize, depending on your viewpoint) your teammates into being the best version of themselves. He has spent this season trying to show how well that works, publicly pushing Tyrese Maxey and Matisse Thybulle to be more willing shooters and then proudly talking about the success of “calling guys out” and noting that it’s all in love, something he’s insisted was the case with any commentary about Simmons.