Ben Simmons Snubs Sixers Organization in Injury Update

Ben Simmons snubbed the Philadelphia 76ers organization by opting to announce the results of his injury scan on social media.

On Tuesday afternoon and night, Ben Simmons dropped some news that made Philadelphia 76ers fans very, very happy. It all started with a Tweet that no one had any idea what it meant, a simple green check emoji. Later in the evening, through Uninterrupted, a media outlet similar to The Player’s Tribune, Simmons announced that the Tweet meant that he was ready to go, and the results of his CT scan revealed he had recovered from his Jones Fracture that he sustained back in February.

Absolutely great news, nothing better could have come on the night before the ultimate end of the season for the Sixers and Sixers fans. But reading between the lines, there’s an interesting subplot that we need to pay attention to, and it has to do with the Sixers organization and their handling of injury updates.

The Sixers have been very, very bad at providing timely and relevant injury updates to the media and public. It took Derek Bodner exposing the team on Joel Embiid‘s meniscus tear for them to provide an update other than “bone bruise,” and they waited until the last possible minute to tell fans that Ben Simmons had experienced a setback that would keep him out for the entire season.

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Additionally, Josh Harris, the owner of the Sixers, decided not to speak to the media during the last home game of the season for the Sixers, and neither did Bryan Colangelo. It’s not clear yet whether or not Colangelo is with the team for their last game of the season and if he’ll provide an update, or just defer and pile all of the questions to his head coach Brett Brown.

With the history the Sixers organization has with not announcing injury updates in a timely manner, Simmons wasted no time letting the organization provide an update, although they certainly had the information and means to put out a press release. He put up the video himself, through a third party media organization that he works with quite regularly.

Some might see this as a non-issue, but to me, there’s questions raised. Why didn’t he wait for the team? Why didn’t the team announce good news as soon as possible? Sure, a press conference to announce it would be nice, but a press release would have been sufficient.

There probably wouldn’t be these questions raised if they had been honest earlier in the season, but that’s not the case. Since the team has this aura around them that is one that feels dishonest, people are wondering what we don’t know, and how much the team is keeping from us.

The Sixers could have looked at this news and reported it themselves, perhaps redeeming themselves from keeping medical information from fans and reporters. It also would have been awesome for them to clear the air on Simmons, and say, “look, see, we told you just a little bit longer!” but instead Simmons took their shine.

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I’m not sure if Simmons did it intentionally, or if he was simply super excited to get the news back and wanted to tell the world. In his video, he still gave thanks to the Sixers organization for all of their support. Intentional or not, I’m glad he got to tell the world before the Sixers did.