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Ben Simmons made headlines despite the fact that he didn't even play a single minute during Thursday's much-anticipated matchup between the Brooklyn Nets and his old team, the Philadelphia 76ers. Up until today, the former Rookie of the Year is still nursing a lingering back injury that has prevented him from making his Nets debut since making the big move from the Sixers.
As it turns out, Brooklyn fans might need to wait a little bit longer for Simmons to take the court for his new team. Nets head coach Steve Nash recently revealed that the All-Star point guard has indeed suffered some sort of setback in his rehab:
“Yeah, a little setback, whatever that was,” Nash said, via Brian Lewis of the new York Post. “So now we’re just trying to make sure we get that in the bag before we rush him out there and suffer a longer setback.”
Simmons is now approaching nine months since he last played in an NBA game. The bad news is that it doesn't sound like he's close to returning. Based on Nash's comments here, it does not seem like the former LSU standout will be coming back anytime soon:
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“He’s not ready for even one-on-one, let alone three-on-three, five-on-five,” Nets coach Steve Nash said. “So he’s got to get to a place where he can go full speed unopposed, one-on-oh, and then we’ll talk about and hopefully quickly he can go to one-on-one, three-on-three, five-on-five.”
The Nets are clearly erring on the side of caution here as they do not want Simmons to re-aggravate what has turned out to be quite a concerning injury. Be that as it may, coach Nash has refused to put too much stock on Simmons' back problem:
“I don’t want to classify it the wrong way, but he’s had back issues at times. So I don’t want to say he’s got a bad back, I don’t know if that’s fair,” Nash said. “He’s had a flare-up of something, but was really healthy for the last six months until the flare-up. So I don’t want it to be … I’m not sure that it’s fair for me to say he has a back problem. It’s just right now he has a flared-up back.”
Coach Nash is doing his best to play down Simmons' back injury here as he describes how this most recent issue as nothing more than a minor setback. Nevertheless, it's hard not to be concerned about the injury given how he's missed so much time because of it. It's also not as if the Nets are cruising right now. It is actually quite the contrary. Brooklyn needs Simmons to be healthy at the soonest possible time and the fact that he still hasn't been given a firm timetable to return is worrying, to say the least.
Right now, the best-case scenario for the Sixers is if they get him back a few weeks before the playoffs start. This will give Simmons a little bit of time to acclimatize with his new team right before the postseason begins. His time will be limited but that's definitely better than having no time at all. The 2022 NBA Playoffs starts on April 16, though, so it goes without saying that time is quickly running out for Simmons and the Nets.
