Sacramento just made a bet: that a player who spent last season fishing instead of playing basketball can outrun the injuries that have chased him for years.
Ben Simmons has agreed to a one-year, $3.5 million deal with the Kings, the veteran's minimum for a player with his service time. The three-time All-Star is 30, is 6-foot-10, and hasn't played in an NBA game since the 2024-25 season. He missed all of last year rehabbing back and leg injuries. Simmons' agent has confirmed the deal and multiple outlets have it the same way, though the team hadn't officially announced it as of this writing, and it isn't clear yet whether the money is guaranteed in full.
On its face, this is defensible. A minimum contract with a cap hit around $2.45 million is the cheapest chip a front office can spend. If Simmons can't stay on the floor, the Kings shrug and move on. The downside is small.
But cheap isn't the same as free. Roster spots are the one thing a rebuild can't buy more of, and Sacramento just spent one on a player whose defining trait for half a decade has been unavailability.
The Kings are coming off a 22-60 season. They're trying to build around Darius Acuff Jr., the No. 7 pick out of Arkansas, on a roster that, per ESPN, has six players in their first two NBA seasons. When you're that young and that bad, every non-guaranteed spot is a lottery ticket on a 22-year-old who might turn into something. The Kings cashed one of those tickets on a 30-year-old whose ceiling, at this point, is a reliable backup.
The injury history isn't ancient, either. This is a franchise that watched its two highest-paid players, Domantas Sabonis and Zach LaVine, both undergo season-ending surgery in February. Sacramento already knows exactly what it feels like to plan around bodies that break. Now it's volunteering for more of that risk in a spot it could have used to develop a kid.
The front office's pitch is that Simmons is a versatile defender who can guard almost any position and back up Acuff at the point. Fine. That's the good version of Simmons, the one who made first-team All-Defense back when he was healthy. But look at what he's actually produced lately. Last season, split between Brooklyn and the Clippers, he averaged 5.0 points, 4.7 rebounds and 5.6 assists in 51 games. In his 18 games with the Clippers, that dropped to 2.9 points and 3.1 assists in 16.4 minutes, and he wasn't in Tyronn Lue's playoff rotation. He hasn't attempted a three-pointer in an NBA game since February 2023. For a team that needs floor spacing around a rookie guard, that's a real problem, not a footnote.
Give the Kings this much: they did their homework. Simmons reportedly worked out for GM Scott Perry in Miami, sat for an hourlong meeting in late August, then flew to Sacramento to visit coach Doug Christie and the staff, where he did an on-court workout and an in-depth medical exam. He also played in a minicamp with the Australian national team in early August. That's more diligence than a minimum flyer usually gets, and it means the Kings needed convincing before signing off.
The Timberwolves and Warriors were interested in Simmons too, according to ESPN, but that interest topped out at a possible training camp invite. The Kings were the only team willing to actually offer a contract. When healthier, deeper rosters look at a player and see maybe worth a camp look, and you see a guaranteed-ish roster spot, you're not finding value. You're paying a premium the rest of the league declined to pay.
And the alternatives weren't nothing. Sacramento talked to Russell Westbrook about a backup role before he chose to retire, had conversations with Victor Oladipo, and operated in a market that still had veteran point guards like Gabe Vincent and Cameron Payne floating around. The Kings could have kept the spot open for a young body or a cleaner veteran. They chose the reclamation project.
I don't hate the ambition. ESPN frames Simmons as a high-upside project with years left in his prospective prime, and if he ever puts it together, a defensive Swiss Army knife next to Acuff is a genuinely useful piece. On $3.5 million, the math says take the swing.
But the swing here is a bet on a body that has repeatedly failed the man attached to it, placed by a franchise that just lost 60 games partly because its own stars couldn't stay healthy. It's also a roster spot, on a team whose entire project is developing young players, spent on someone who hasn't been a productive NBA player since before some of his new teammates were drafted.
Watch the preseason. If Simmons looks like the defender the Kings are describing, this ages into a smart, cheap flyer. If his back barks again before the games matter, Sacramento will have learned the lesson it should already know: the cheapest contract in basketball still costs you the one thing a rebuild can't replace.
