Despite the fact that all parties appear to agree that parting ways is in everyone’s best interest, Ben Simmons is still a member of the Philadelphia 76ers. According to reports, the Sixers are shopping the All-Star guard/forward around, and Simmons recently met with the team’s decision-makers and communicated his desire for a trade so strongly that he would skip training camp.
Everything that is going on around Simmons appears to irritate Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal. Barkley appeared on an edition of The Big Podcast with Shaq with Shaq, Nischelle Turner, and Spice Adams, and when the subject moved to Simmons, both Hall of Fame inductees expressed their dissatisfaction 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.”