Georges Niang is fully ensconced as a pivotal role player for the Cleveland Cavaliers, who boast their best chance of making it back to the NBA Finals since LeBron James' swan song in Northeast Ohio. Ben Simmons, meanwhile, is a shell of the two-way impact player he was early in his career, more of a salary albatross for the Brooklyn Nets than helpful nightly contributor. It's been about year and-a-half since they were teammates with the Philadelphia 76ers, too.
It's safe to say their drastically different current realities and the time elapsed since they played together in the City of Brotherly Love hasn't restored any love lost between Niang and Simmons, though. On the most recent episode of The Woj Pod, Niang recalled how his debut campaign with the 76ers was marred by Simmons' approach to forcing his way out of Philadelphia.
“The whole Ben Simmons thing was crazy, you know. I sign a deal there. I'm thinking oh I’m going to play with a passing point guard that’s gonna come in and probably loves playing alongside shooters and that’s what I am,” Niang told ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski. “He’ll get to the lane and kick out, and then you hear know he doesn’t want to meet with the team, he doesn’t want to come back, and then when he does come back, it was almost like having you know 16 guys and then 1 guy that just wanted no part of it. You know whether it’s walking by in hallways not saying anything to anybody, it was just a peculiar situation. Where I came from Utah where everybody was for everybody, this one was just kinda like what did we do to you as players that you don’t want to speak to us? And I get there's you know definitely other things that went along with it and why he acted the way he did, but that was pretty wild.”
The fraught history between Georges Niang and Ben Simmons
You can understand Niang's initial frustration with Simmons. He joined Philadelphia as a free agent in the summer of 2021 to chase a championship alongside Simmons and Joel Embiid, ostensibly addressing the team's longstanding lack of spacing from the frontcourt, but was instead thrust into a tension-filled team culture that basically made it impossible for the 76ers to accomplish their goal—even after swapping Simmons for James Harden at the trade deadline.
Still, it's not like the extremely fragile personal dynamics at play between Simmons, Doc Rivers and Embiid were a secret. Philadelphia's veteran head coach and franchise player publicly threw Simmons under the bus following their disappointing loss to the underdog Atlanta Hawks in the 2021 Eastern Conference Semifinals, a series remembered most for the 6'10 playmaker opting to pass to the perimeter instead of challenge Trae Young at the rim in the waning moments of Game 7.
The writing was on the wall for Simmons' future in Philadelphia before Niang put pen to paper on his two-year deal with the 76ers Simmons officially requested a trade from the team just a few weeks after Niang signed his contract.
During Simmons' first road game as a Philadelphia opponent last season, Niang got in his face after forcing a turnover while guarding his former teammate in the post. Simmons responded with a light shove, eliciting a technical foul call from the officials and chants of “overrated” from a raucous Philly crowd as Niang played innocent.
There's no doubt Simmons could've handled his unceremonious departure from the Sixers with more care for his teammates. It's also undeniable that Niang didn't have a front-row seat to the developments that sparked Simmons' exit, playing for the Utah Jazz as the relationship between team and player unraveled.
Is this really the type of personal rivalry that needed stoking? Probably not. Either way, keep a close eye on Niang and Simmons—who's currently sidelined but avoided another serious injury, thankfully—when the Cavs and Nets face-off for a fourth and final time this season on March 10th in Brooklyn.
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