Charles Barkley And Shaq Ripped Ben Simmons For How He’s Handled This Offseason: ‘You Ain’t That Damn Good’

Ben Simmons is still a member of the Philadelphia 76ers despite the fact that both parties seem to agree that a parting of ways is in everyone’s best interest. Reports have indicated the team is shopping the All-Star guard/forward around, while Simmons apparently sat down with the Sixers’ decision-makers recently and expressed that he wants a trade so badly that he’d skip training camp.

Everything happening around Simmons looks like it rubs Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal the wrong way. Barkley joined Shaq, Nischelle Turner, and Spice Adams on an episode of The Big Podcast with Shaq, and when the conversation turned to Simmons, both Hall of Fame inductees expressed their frustration with how things are going with him.

“I’m disappointed in Ben Simmons,” Barkley said. “When you give somebody $200 million to dribble a stupid basketball, and the only thing you ask him is be better as a player, and their first response is, ‘I don’t wanna play here anymore,’ that disappoints me as a player, that disappoints me as a fan. They’re not saying, ‘Hey, come over here and cut my grass,’ they’re saying, ‘Ben, we need you to learn how to shoot the basketball.'”

Shaq shared that sentiment, going as far as to tell Simmons he isn’t a great player.

“If you want to get to that next level, you have to be great, and to be great, you have to work on your game,” Shaq said. “Don’t be putting pictures on your Instagram of your Ferrari or what actress you hang around with. When you play in a town like Philadelphia, Boston, L.A., Miami, hard working towns, they don’t give a sh*t about none of that. They want you to come, work hard, and play hard.”

The Hall of Fame center then brought up Simmons’ Game 6 in the Eastern Conference Semifinals against the Atlanta Hawks, saying that he looked into his eyes and saw a player who was “terrified of being fouled and missing free throws,” while Barkley expressed his annoyance at “the third year in a row they put up them bullsh*t jump shots during the summer.”

“A lot of these people, you hear from your followers how good you are, how great you are,” Shaq said to close. “But you’re hearing from some OGs right now: you ain’t that damn good. And I said what I said, and Chuck said what he said. If you don’t like it, do what you gotta do. But you ain’t that damn good.”