Doc Rivers has made clear that he’d like to get Ben Simmons back on the Philadelphia 76ers. Despite Simmons’ efforts to continue his career elsewhere, which includes informing the team he will not report to training camp next week, Rivers has said that his hope is they can get Simmons to change his mind and continue his career in the City of Brotherly Love.
Rivers expressed this belief in an interview with Stephen A. Smith earlier this week, and on Friday, he made a cameo on MSNBC’s Morning Joe where he was once against asked about his All-Star guard. Co-host Willie Geist ended a segment on Rivers’ new podcast series, It Was Said: Sports, with a question about whether or not he’ll be able to convince Simmons to stick around. Rivers responded by pandering to MSNBC’s left-of-center audience with an analogy that probably wasn’t the best course of action.
“Well, I’m gonna try,” Rivers said, per Mediaite. “There’s times that I think we’re getting through, and then there’s times that I think that I’m talking to people who still believe Trump won the election. So, I’m not sure, but I’m gonna keep trying, let me say that.”
He is, of course, referencing the fact that now-former president Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden last November and has since been yammering on and on about how, actually, he didn’t, which is a lie. Whether or not comparing Simmons — who endorsed Biden and Kamala Harris last year — and his camp to MAGA folks was a good idea remains to be seen, but even if this was Rivers getting a channel-appropriate joke off, I, personally, will be putting money on “it was not.”
