There is a version of the Ben Simmons story that ends well, and if you squint at the footage from Port Melbourne this week you can almost see it. He's on the court, healthy, a full participant with what ESPN's Marc J. Spears described as "zero restrictions," running with Josh Giddey and Dyson Daniels at a player-led Boomers minicamp that began Monday. He flew in on his own dime. He told a Melbourne reporter, "Yeah, that's why I'm here," and added, "It's a long way to fly just to not do it." Good line. Real intent.
The version I believe is less kind: this is a cautionary tale wearing the costume of a comeback.
Look at the shape of the opportunity and you can see exactly where the market has Simmons priced. Spears reported that several NBA teams have expressed interest and that he's open to a minimum contract, but the concrete thing on the table is a non-guaranteed offer to attend a Western Conference team's minicamp. Not a roster spot or guaranteed money. A tryout. Jake Fischer, working separately, landed on the same reality and put it plainly: "No one's looking to give Ben Simmons a guaranteed roster spot right now." When two insiders who aren't comparing notes land on the same conclusion, it's probably right.
That's the gap between what Simmons was and what he is now. He was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2016 draft, won Rookie of the Year, made three All-Star teams, and earned an All-NBA nod and two All-Defensive selections. Over more than 275 games in Philadelphia he averaged 15.9 points, 8.1 rebounds and 7.7 assists. For a stretch he was one of the most singular young players in the league, a point-forward who could smother the other team's best perimeter scorer and push the ball in transition like a runaway train.
Then the floor gave out. The 2022 trade to Brooklyn that brought James Harden to Philadelphia was supposed to be a reset. Instead his back betrayed him, again and again. Brooklyn shut him down for a nerve impingement in both 2023 and 2024, and he had back surgery in March 2024. His final NBA season, 2024-25, ended with him averaging 5.0 points, 5.6 assists and 4.7 rebounds in 22 minutes across 51 games, a run that included getting waived by the Nets in February before he landed with the Clippers. In the playoffs he all but vanished, averaging 0.8 points and 1.4 rebounds across five first-round appearances. Then he sat out all of 2025-26 to rest, and during that year off he became majority owner of a South Florida fishing club and spent a good chunk of his time on the water.
I don't hold the fishing against him. Rest after multiple back procedures makes sense. What I hold against the comeback story is the distance a year on the boat puts between a player and the game, and the fact that he's trying to close that distance right when the league has decided he isn't worth guaranteeing.
One detail should make any front office pause. Fischer says Simmons already turned down essentially this same deal a year ago, a training camp invite from the reigning champion Knicks, and passed because there was no guaranteed money in it. "He could have had that exact situation from New York," Fischer said, "and the fact that it wasn't guaranteed money was a major reason why he didn't join the Knicks." So the make-good tryout he's chasing now is the same one he waved off then, only now he's a year older and further from live basketball, and paying to audition for it.
That brings me to the case I'd make in any war room considering him. The upside is a healthy, motivated defender and connective passer on a minimum deal, and if the back holds, that's a useful player. But look at the odds honestly. He hasn't played competitive basketball in over a year, his last healthy stretch was thin, and the injury that wrecked him doesn't announce when it's coming back. Against that low-probability payoff, weigh what Simmons reliably brings the moment he signs anywhere: a spotlight. CBS Sports called it "the annual Ben Simmons headlines in the midst of the NBA's offseason doldrums," and they're not wrong. He's a story before he's a rotation piece. For a fringe contender or a rebuilding team trying to develop young players in peace, importing that much noise for a coin flip on a 12th or 13th man is a bad trade of attention for output.
None of this means Simmons can't play for the Boomers. He's represented Australia before, at the 2013 FIBA Oceania Championships as a teenager, though he missed three Olympics after that, and Andrew Bogut has publicly backed a return. A national team role, where the standard is fit and availability rather than a guaranteed NBA salary, is a genuinely reasonable landing spot for him, and the minicamp coaches, including the Wizards' Adam Caporn, get a look at him in NBA-caliber settings.
The NBA piece is a different bet, and I'd let someone else make it. Nobody's reported which Western Conference team made the offer, and it isn't the Lakers, as far as anyone has said. Whoever it is, they're gambling that a former MVP-caliber talent can be recovered on the cheap. Sometimes that works. More often, when the market has universally agreed a player isn't worth guaranteeing, the market is right. Simmons flew a long way to prove otherwise. Admire the effort, but don't confuse it with a sure thing.
