Jacque Vaughn Made It Pretty Clear That He's Already Sick Of The Ben Simmons Experience In Brooklyn
Icon Sportswire. Getty Images.I wonder, if you gave the Nets a do-over, would they still make the Ben Simmons/James Harden trade? Your gut probably tells you absolutely not right? He gave them nothing last year, and now this season with him supposedly healthy, things haven't exactly changed. In 37 games this season Simmons is nowhere close to his career averages, putting up just 7.4/6.5/6.4/1.4 on 56% shooting, but just 5.9 FGA a night. If you were curious, his career average is 10.9 FGA. Whatever mental block may have existed at the end of his tenure in Philly clearly still exists.
As a reminder, the Nets are still on the hook for this thing
Which certainly looks like it won't age all that well as the years go on. It's tough when you're paying max money for this type of production, and while nobody in the NBA is untradeable, I'm not sure the Nets could get back $60 cents on the dollar for Simmons right now. Given what we've seen these last few years and the price it takes, who is lining up to bring him in? The Nets are stuck with their choice whether they like it or not it seems.
After the Nets B2B loss against the Pistons last night, you got the sense that Jacque Vaughn in starting to feel that same frustration that I'm sure the Sixers and their fans know all too well. Simmons left with "knee soreness" after playing 20 minutes (0/1/7/1 on 0-3 shooting) and I thoguht Vaughn's comments postgame were pretty telling
Say what you want about Jacque Vaughn as a coach, but I couldn't agree more with his overall point. The expectation in the NBA should be that the players actually do their job and be ready to play every game. With load management and stars resting being such a big issue right now, that was refreshing to hear. At the same time, I fear that Vaughn made a similar mistake to what we saw Doc Rivers make when he had to deal with this bullshit. You know what doesn't work? Sort of throwing Simmons under the bus to the media. If this was supposed to be some sort of motivation tactic, we have a large enough body of evidence to suggest that this approach does not work with Simmons. If anything, it increases the chance that he just says "fuck it".
Is what Vaughn said wrong? No. Not really. But this is probably something you should be keeping in house. There's really no benefit to saying it to the media, even if you didn't have bad intentions or were just telling the truth. Things get spun, narratives get created, and all it does is make your life harder as you try and navigate life without KD.
I do feel at times Simmons gets a raw deal and people pile on him because that's the trendy thing to do on social media these days. The guy literally can't miss a shot without being clowned, which has to be tough. At the same time, a lot of his criticisms are self-inflicted. He doesn't really show that he's working on his game or figuring out a way to fix his on court limitations. You do that and you're not really going to get the benefit of the doubt when it comes to injuries or rest or any of that stuff.
All I know is the time has come to get the popcorn ready because once you get the coach throwing his players under the bus to the media, that's when the good shit starts
