Ben Simmons is one of the prominent stars in the NBA, having made a name for himself as an elite defender, slasher, and playmaker. He sat out all of the 2021-22 season, but he had a stellar year during the 2020-21 season, averaging 14.3 PPG, 7.2 RPG, and 6.9 APG.
Recently, the Nets star made headlines due to him being pranked by a comedian named Gerald Huston, who called him “Russell Westbrook” while the star was shopping at a candy store. Huston recently explained why he took that course of action, claiming that he did it because the Nets star wouldn’t take pictures with some children who wanted photos with him.
Basically, what happened was… I kind of always pranked celebrities a lot… I went up there and when I left, I seen kids they were like “Ben Simmons over there man.”
I was like, “Oh, Ben Simmons is here?”
They were like, “Yeah, but he won’t he take a picture with me though, he won’t take the picture with us.”
I was like, “Damn, he won’t take a picture with y’all?”
He’s like, “No man, you try to get a picture with him, he said no pictures.”
I was like all right, I’ll go prank this athlete… I caught up to him, and I was like, I’m gonna call him Russell Westbrook. Because he can’t shoot, won’t shoot… At least Westbrook will attempts a jump shot.
He got what he deserved man. He was being a d*uche that day.
There is no doubt that athletes obviously have the right to refuse pictures with fans, and the offseason is generally a time when they’re subjected to less attention from the public.
However, it is clear that the comedian felt as though his pranking Ben Simmons was “deserved”, as Simmons didn’t make an exception and take photos with some children who were clearly excited to see an NBA star at a mall. It remains to be seen if Ben Simmons will comment on this situation going forward. We’ve seen Simmons take pictures with fans before, so perhaps we will see him take more pictures with fans in the future.
