PHILADELPHIA — After all the hype and the hoopla, all the bitterness and all the hand-wringing, after a blockbuster trade that reshaped two franchises and reshuffled the NBA power grid, the Nets and Sixers finally faced off Thursday night and … it was as if nothing had changed at all.
Ben Simmons didn’t play for Brooklyn, after months of not playing for Philadelphia.
James Harden stumbled around aimlessly for the Sixers, mirroring his final lackluster weeks with the Nets.
Kevin Durant was brilliant; Kyrie Irving, divine; Joel Embiid, dominant. And Sixers fans? Edgy, loud and brutish, booing their own team almost as lustily as they booed Simmons, their onetime hero turned villain. Same as it ever was.
The Nets skipped away with a shockingly easy 129–100 victory, and no one really learned anything, except perhaps this: The Sixers still have much work to do if they want to make a serious run at the Eastern Conference title. And the Nets, despite their modest record (34–33) and their tenuous place in the standings (eighth), might be the most dangerous team in the league—if they ever get all their stars together for an extended period.
This shockingly lopsided affair was not a referendum on the trade, or the start of a rivalry or even a decent gauge of anything. Just a lot of noise and angst and brouhaha and boos.
But that’s what you get when two presumed contenders swap disgruntled superstars midseason: ambiguity, confusion, inconsistency and a lot of talk about how everyone’s still acclimating.
“Tonight was good for us, man,” Harden rationalized after making just 3-of-17 shots. “We got our a-- kicked. And, you know, since I’ve been here, everything has been sweet, and we’ve been winning games. And so tonight was good for us, and we get an opportunity to come down to reality.”
This was, after all, just Harden’s sixth game as a Sixer, following a rehab period for his hamstring. The Nets are still incorporating ex-Sixers Seth Curry and Andre Drummond and still waiting for Simmons to declare himself mentally and physically ready to play. They just got Durant back last week, after a six-week rehab for a knee injury.
Both teams have championship aspirations, if they can smooth out the rough edges in time, and yet no one has much time at all. The Sixers have 17 games left before the playoffs. The Nets have 15 games on the schedule, and Irving—still barred from home games because of his refusal to get the coronavirus vaccine—can play in only five of them.
There’s a growing sense that Simmons will make his Nets debut soon, but their new Big Three might get just a handful of games to find a rhythm before the postseason. And they will almost certainly start that run from the play-in tournament, where one bad night (and/or Irving’s ineligibility) could sink them.
But on Thursday, at least, the Nets looked the part of a superpower, with Durant, Irving and Curry combining for 71 points on 58% shooting (28-of-48), while Simmons—looking perfectly at ease despite the hostility surrounding him—enjoyed the show from the bench.
It was a much more aggravating evening for Simmons’s former tag-team partner and frenemy, Embiid, who struggled from the field (5-of-17), thrived at the foul line (15-of-19) and got very little help from his supporting cast. He declined to speak to the media afterward, presumably because he was in no mood to explain it all, or perhaps because he was annoyed at the Sixers’ sudden lack of rhythm and ball movement. Harden’s 11 points marked his lowest output as a Sixer, and he had nearly as many turnovers (four) as assists (five).
“James isn’t the only one who struggled,” coach Doc Rivers said. “The whole team struggled. I struggled. Everybody struggled. … Part of it was we didn’t space, we didn’t move the ball. Everybody wanted to win the game. But we didn’t understand: You have to play together to win the game. So that’s a great lesson for us.”
If you tuned in expecting brilliant basketball from two NBA titans, you’d have been disappointed. But if you tuned in for the spectacle of it all, well, there was no shortage.
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Simmons—who sat out 54 games while waiting for Philly to accede to his trade demand—was booed the moment he ambled onto the court for pregame warmups at 6:44 p.m., wearing a black sleeveless Nets warmup shirt and black sweatpants, tucked into black socks. All he was missing was a black hat.
Sixers fans jeered with glee, and expressed their ire in all sorts of creative ways. A fan in the sixth row wore a repurposed red Simmons jersey, with the word “COWARD” scrawled on silver duct tape across the chest, while he waved a T-shirt bearing Simmons’s face that read “Mister Softee.” The guy next to him wore a rubber chicken head.
Simmons grabbed a ball, dribbled a bit, then played the part of rebounder and passer for teammate Patty Mills. Some fans started a chant: “Shoot. The. Ball.”—a pointed and poignant mantra, given that Simmons’s last games as a Sixer were marked by his refusal to shoot in fourth quarters, and a notorious decision to pass up a dunk in favor of passing to a teammate.
Simmons never did oblige the fans Thursday, either, though he did eventually slam a one-handed dunk, eliciting a round of sarcastic applause. Things got nastier once the game started, with fans repeatedly breaking into loud chants of, “F--- Ben Simmons!” At least one heckler near the Nets’ bench was ejected during the game. During pregame and halftime, arena security held up long yellow ropes along each baseline—presumably to deter anyone stupid enough to rush the court, and not agile enough to avoid a rope.
Simmons, wearing a black Louis Vuitton, hockey-style jersey with bright-yellow trim, seemed generally unfazed by the boos and the chants, which would seem to bode well for whenever he returns again, presumably in uniform and ready to play. The Nets wanted Simmons to feel the animosity now, with nothing on the line, so that the next time won’t seem so daunting. These teams won’t meet again this season, unless it’s in the playoffs when they’ll need Simmons at his best.
Anyway, it was easy to absorb the taunts and profanities Thursday as Simmons watched his new team obliterate his old team, the margin soaring from 17 points in the first quarter to 24 in the second to 36 in the fourth. By then, the boos were being directed at the Sixers, and Simmons was enjoying a laugh on the bench with Durant and Drummond.
“We look at Ben as our brother,” Durant said. “So we wanted to come out there and have them focus on the court, more so than just always focusing on him. … It’s hard for you to chant at Ben Simmons when you’re losing by that much.”
