Took up arms against bullies on behalf of others. Growing up in suburban Blackburn North, Ben Simmons was quiet, though not timid. Ben Simmons was the youngest of six children in a blended family, his mum Julie bringing four kids (Melissa, Emily, Liam and Sean) into her marriage to Bronx native Dave Simmons – an African-American star of the Melbourne Tigers during Australian basketball’s 1990s heyday – after which Olivia and Ben were born. To understand the captivating fall, you need to know the remarkable rise. Simmons with his mum, Julie, and dad, Dave, a Bronx native and star of the Melbourne Tigers during Australian basketball’s 1990s heyday. I know I’m not gonna go out there and suck. “I love when people are talking shit, wanting to see me down, because in my head I’m playing with house money. “It sucks.” But all that criticism is fuel, too, for a new season that’s now two weeks old but, when we met in September, had not yet begun. “Everyone’s been tearing me down for a year straight,” he says, pausing. “I know I’m not gonna go out there and suck. This is the warped and dehumanising business of being Ben Simmons.
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Somewhere behind the lopsided labels slapped on his persona – overrated, underrated, pathetic, persecuted – there’s a person trying to reconcile the difference between how much he’s worth and how much he’s paid, where he’s come from and where he’s going – all in full public view. Besides that, I just want to be me.”Ĭonsider for a moment what that’s like, just to be him. I know what my priorities are, and what I need to do every day. It took time, but I’m at peace with who I am and what’s going on around me. If I’m worried or sad or frustrated or angry, I feel like I’m better able to deal with that now.
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“I had a terrible year,” Simmons says, flatly, “so I know how to handle my emotions and what I need to be doing to get on track. He’s also become a kind of mental-health test case – alongside Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles and Nick Kyrgios – for how much attention and pressure and sheer spite athletes should be expected to endure. The ongoing “Ben Simmons Saga” turned into a sporting soap opera, covered in such unrelenting detail that the 2016 number-one draft pick, 2018 rookie of the year and 2019 recipient of a five-year, $US170 million contract – a three-time All-Star, and certainly the best NBA player Australia has ever produced – became the most loathed figure in basketball, if not the most maligned athlete in America.ĭepending on the pundit you quote, Simmons is a punk or a star, cry-baby or victim, phenom or disgrace, stud or dud, beast or bust, bum or brat – fraud or faker or freak. For those who don’t follow basketball, almost 500 days ago during an important final for the Philadelphia 76ers, Simmons performed a relatively benign yet objectively poor play, sparking a sad chain of events: the loss of the game being followed by public spats, trade stand-offs, long-term physical injury, longer-term mental-health issues, and now – finally – a stuttering comeback. This is what’s known as an understatement. I didn’t mind living there … for a while. Sports, work, Eagles, Sixers, Flyers – that’s Philly,” says Simmons, 26, who was traded away from that pit of parochialism at the start of the year to the Brooklyn Nets, a shift not without controversy. Staring down at the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty and the monoliths of lower Manhattan, the young National Basketball Association star from Melbourne whom they once called “The Wizard of Oz” can’t help but note – like Dorothy Gale in black Stussy kicks – that he’s not in Philadelphia any more. Clad completely in black, he slides into the rooftop September sunshine like a wraith, 208 centimetres tall (6 foot 10 inches), looking languid yet swift, just as he does on the basketball court.īellying up to the terrace bar, he removes his sunglasses, takes a sip of a San Pellegrino and smiles. H igh on a red-brick building in Brooklyn, the considerable frame of Ben Simmons exits a private lift into a members-only New York City social club. This story is part of Good Weekend’s best cover stories of 2022.
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