Stephen A. Smith jumped into the drama between Ben Simmons and the 76ers after Philadelphia’s Game 7 debacle over the weekend.
Simmons stirred the pot Sunday by posting a picture on his Instagram story with a glass of red wine and the Sixers’ blowout loss on the television in the background, which many took as a shot at Philadelphia.
Smith was having none of it on his podcast this week, tearing into the current Nets forward for criticizing “the team you quit on.”
“The only thing worse than James Harden was that sorry trifling a-- Ben Simmons," Smith said on Know Mercy with Stephen A. Smith. “How the hell are you talking about a basketball player when you treat putting on a basketball uniform and dribbling, when you treat that as if somebody asked you to get on the front lines in Ukraine to fight Russia? That’s how scared he is to play basketball.”
Here’s Smith’s entire monologue on Simmons.
I tried to be nice to Ben Simmons, but I’m done with his sorry ass pic.twitter.com/fymwOfORxE
— Stephen A Smith (@stephenasmith) May 16, 2023
Smith clearly held nothing back on this one. He’s been critical of Harden, calling his Game 7 performance “awful,” and Joel Embiid, but those criticisms look like nothing compared to his take on Simmons, who has played in just 42 games since the end of the 2020–21 season.
