Ben Simmons stirred the pot this week after starring in a revealing interview with former teammate JJ Redick. The Brooklyn Nets star is getting ready to face a new season with a different team and took his chance to talk about all the stuff that happened in the past year and how he’s feeling ahead of the 2022-23 season.
Simmons talked about all the criticism he received from fans, media, and even former players like Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal. The latter was very harsh on Simmons, which led the then Philadelphia 76ers player to send a DM to Shaq and called him out for speaking about him without not knowing his story.
This was one of the topics of his participation on Redick’s show, with Simmons calling out Shaq for revealing his DMs while also telling him he never reached out to ask what was happening to his ‘LSU brother’.
“I DM’d him and I was like, ‘why are you saying this if you don’t even know the story?’ ‘Cause he always wants to say like yo, we’re LSU brothers, you’re my brother, all this, that. If you’re my LSU brother you would’ve reached out by now and it’s been months since I’ve been dealing with this. You ain’t reached out once and said like, ‘hey, you OK? Like, what’s going on?’”
Shaquille O’Neal Responds To Ben Simmons’ Comments
Well, now Shaq had the chance to defend himself and say his side of this story. The Big Diesel used his show to send a message to Simmons, recalling what happened when he criticized the Australian point guard and why he said what he said (8:30).
“All these young players need to understand, Shaquille O’Neal don’t need to hate on you. Everything you’re doing, I have done it a hundred times over. First of all, if you play at 9.30 pm and we come on at 10 pm and we say something, it’s just what we see. The mental health thing ain’t came out until everybody started bashing you, then you let people know you have mental health problems and if you go back, I told the world he DM’d me, he told me he’s going through some problems, and I said I was going to back off. And then I told him in the DM, ‘ok, the reason why people don’t know what’s going on is because you ain’t talking. As far of what I saw, as far of what I know, I know how to get to the next level. He knows that. And yes, you can be my brother but I ain’t gonna always sugarcoat things, I’m gonna tell you the real… But you can’t say I’m hating, because all the stuff you’re doing, you’re doing it because you saw me do it.”
Just like he did with Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert, Shaq told Ben Simmons that he criticizes him because he knows he can do more, and he knows how to get better and better. Simmons has been in the league for a while now and numbers show he has regressed his level. Shaq is trying to change that with his words, but his style of giving advice isn’t appealing to everybody.
Simmons is going to start a new chapter in his career with the Nets, and everybody is waiting to see what’s next for him. If he gets it together, he would become a huge piece of the Nets’ success, but right now that’s only speculation.
