Local Sports, At it Again

See, this is a classic case in which not saying anything is the right way to go through life, at all times (unless you’re on the goddamn train, then please, for the love of god, say something).

Earlier this week – and it’s only Tuesday, so let that be your guide as to what kind of week it has already been – some photos and videos emerged of 76ers star and theoretical basketball player Ben Simmons more or less doggin’ it in practice. He had a cell phone in his pocket and everything! Basketball with a cell phone on you! This is the behavior of a man who is well off enough in life to afford a protection plan on his temporary electronics.

This is also, if you would believe the sports blogs and talk radio bric-a-brack and NBA sicko freaks that I follow on Twitter because I have a big stupid mushroom where my brain should be, the behavior of an uncommitted saboteur who is only doing the absolute least required of him to receive a paycheck. And, look, I think those people are probably right, but I ask you this, theoretical person who is reading this / my little brother: whomst among us has not fuckin’ dogged it in a basketball practice? Are we, the slobs of America, going to sit in judgement of a world-class athlete who has been playing basketball longer than many of us have held steady jobs or not been drinking so much as to black out, simply because he has the gall to not try his hardest at every moment of the thing not consequences? I mean, all that other stuff, too, obviously, but this? I don’t know, man. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on that particular gripe.

Then, flash forward to now, and the fuckin’ dude has been suspended for doggin’ it! Goddamn, the chuds were right and I was wrong! Never think anything, and if you must think it, never tell anyone that you’ve thought it.

All of this points to the continued near-end of the Ben Simmons Theoretical Basketball experiment in Philadelphia, a lovely little thought exercise that has, in part, robbed my favorite professional athlete of my life of many his best years. If nothing else, I can now let go of my “Ben Simmons is better than Giannis” take, which I held in my heart as true up until this and this happened.

Also, the Bills lost. Sport!