Is it fair to criticize Ben Simmons?

[Who]

Nope. Not for not playing in this series. He tried to comeback for it but his body wasn't up to it. He is hurt.

He'll be back next year.

[Goldstar88]

He was in an uncomfortable working environment and then suddenly developed mental illness? Yeah, I don’t buy that for a second. I’ve said this before and have experienced it, a toxic work environment can affect you mentally, but it doesn’t cause mental illness.

On a side note, I think it was stupid for him to say that he was planning to play game 4. They should have just listed him as questionable and then it could be decided whether to play or not right before the game. I believe it would have been stupid for him to play after the team went down 0-3. When they lose the series, they wouldn’t be able to tell themselves, “Well we didn’t have Ben. It could have been different.”

[Phantom255x]

Nope. Not for not playing in this series. He tried to comeback for it but his body wasn't up to it. He is hurt.

He'll be back next year.

Yes he will, cheerleading from the sidelines! 

[Vermont Green]

For the fanbase to trust Ben you have to hope that he's locked himself in the gym and committed himself to making the next season the best of his career. He should want blow everyone away next year, not wallow in his sadness. Take charge of your life, you've gotten away from Philly now go make Brooklyn your home.

I don't think the "lock yourself in the gym" part is going to happen or do any good until the underlying mental health issues are dealt with (I am assuming there are in fact underlying mental health issues).  I am not letting Ben off the hook for how he has handled things but I think this is the approach that both teams took.  Ben, just go to the gym and let us know when you are ready.  It doesn't seem to me that he is going to be able to just pull himself up by his bootstraps without some mental health treatment.  I have no idea what that "treatment" would look like or how it works but that is where it seems you need to start.  Locking himself in a gym is not going to do any good until he gets his head straight. 

There is no shame in admitting you need help with that aspect.  Again, I don't know what is in his head or what problems may or may not be lurking there but as a casual observer, I think it is pretty clear that there is something from a mental health perspective that needs to be addressed.

[Roy H.]

I think it's fair to criticize people who can't perform at their jobs.

Ben Simmons has chosen professional basketball.  He chose to accept a $40 million / year contract.  He chose to sit out with the Sixers.  He chose to malinger at practices.  If he experiences crippling anxiety or other mental illness, that's not necessarily a "fault" or something he has control of.  However, fans can criticize him for choosing a career that he's unable to perform at.  If you can't meet the core expectations of the job, retire.

And, I do see it as similar to Simone Biles.  She accepted the endorsement money.  She billed herself as the GOAT, branding merchandise that she profited off of.  If she can't mentally perform at the highest level, it's something that should be held against her when judging her legacy.  The mental illness isn't a choice or a fault, but the marketing is. 

Not every person is suited to their career, even if they're talented at it.  You need the entire constellation of talents to be an athlete, and that means being free from mental setbacks.  It's no different than a lawyer or a chef or a truck driver:  if the pressures of the job are causing you to fail at it, and counseling / medication aren't alleviating the problem, then maybe it's time to pick a different career.

[angryguy77]

https://www.reddit.com/r/bostonceltics/comments/uccbtx/ben_simmons_on_game_day_via_riotcomedy_on_ig/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

[Moranis]

He was in an uncomfortable working environment and then suddenly developed mental illness? Yeah, I don’t buy that for a second. I’ve said this before and have experienced it, a toxic work environment can affect you mentally, but it doesn’t cause mental illness.

On a side note, I think it was stupid for him to say that he was planning to play game 4. They should have just listed him as questionable and then it could be decided whether to play or not right before the game. I believe it would have been stupid for him to play after the team went down 0-3. When they lose the series, they wouldn’t be able to tell themselves, “Well we didn’t have Ben. It could have been different.”

He never said he had a mental illness

[Roy H.]

He was in an uncomfortable working environment and then suddenly developed mental illness? Yeah, I don’t buy that for a second. I’ve said this before and have experienced it, a toxic work environment can affect you mentally, but it doesn’t cause mental illness.

On a side note, I think it was stupid for him to say that he was planning to play game 4. They should have just listed him as questionable and then it could be decided whether to play or not right before the game. I believe it would have been stupid for him to play after the team went down 0-3. When they lose the series, they wouldn’t be able to tell themselves, “Well we didn’t have Ben. It could have been different.”

He never said he had a mental illness

“I want to be careful here. I don’t want to overstate my understanding of the situation because I’m not in Ben’s shoes. That’s very important for me not to speak for Ben because I can’t relate to what he’s going through,” Nash said ahead of tipoff for Game 4 on Monday. “There is a mental component with everything. I think Ben has addressed that there is a mental component with what he’s going through. But how much and where he’s at with that is not for me to speak about.

Simmons arrived in Philadelphia near the end of the preseason but cited his mental health as the reason his participation in team activities was so limited. The 76ers and Simmons disagreed about the degrees of access to Simmons that the team and its doctors were allotted to diagnose and affirm his mental health.

I guess there can be a quibble in terms of the definition of "mental illness", but mental health concerns that impact somebody's day to day activities would generally fit that term.  He seemingly would meet criteria for a psychiatric diagnosis, in that his mental health struggles are impacting his day to day activities.

[alt]

Celtics fans, Philly fans, Nets fans...  they're all dumping on Ben Simmons.  He's fragile, he's weak, the Nets got played, etc., etc.

And, frankly, I'm right there with those fans:  mental toughness is a necessary skill for an athlete.  I wouldn't want him on our team, just like I didn't want Kyrie on the team after he showed himself to be a giant distraction despite his talent.

But, is there another side of this? Do we sympathize with Simmons due to his mental health issues?Is this at all comparable to Simone Biles, who was generally lauded for walking away from her team in the middle of the Olympics?

Ethan Sherwood Strauss published a very good piece about this topic on his (always excellent) substack.


https://houseofstrauss.substack.com/p/pity-the-zoomer-athlete?s=r

The shift from celebrating triumph over adversity to praising pressure evasion has come with an elevation of narcissism. Don’t focus on others and their picayune pressures. Focus on you. Put yourself first. That’s the road to mental health.

.....


I’ll now take this opportunity to say a) I feel bad for Osaka, who seems legitimately depressed, and b) my sympathy counts for nothing. The former statement is obviously common, but the latter one less so in media. The premise, in not just journalism but all kinds of professional-class settings, is that group sympathy at scale is some magical elixir. Dismissal of grievance is the opposite, a poison that must be viciously opposed. Sometimes, it seems like the greatest taboo in these settings is to reject a fashionable pity party. To say “you’re not a victim” isn’t just considered dickish, but wholesale heresy.

The therapeutic language has been going strong in these spaces, and, to quote one television psychologist, “How’s that working for us?” The Zoomer athletes appear no more happy for the large-scale sensitivity to their pain. We, the media, might just be enablers of unhealthy behavior, most especially when we’re trying to promote “mental health” through celebrity avatars. We eat up nearly every celebration of their narcissism, and encourage solipsism like it’s the path to enlightenment. So we get what we incentivize: Athletes who talk a lot about their sadness in between LARPing as righteous revolutionaries.

And yet I still feel horribly for the athletes, but most of all their non-celebrity generational brethren. They’ve all come of age in a narcissism trap, using devices that were designed to be highly addictive, powerful contraptions that stoke obsessive inward focus. At least old-school television was about other people. The IG scroll is about you, either explicitly or implicitly.

Worth reading the whole thing.

I think I'm a degree more sanguine and less sophisticated than Strauss: it's a pity for Simmons he hasn't been able to play - I thought the issue was his back? Is it rumored to be psychosomatic or something? - but if fans want to rant/vent about his injuries/lack of toughness/whatever, I think they're entitled to do so and it's up to Simmons to shut down and ignore the criticism - it's the fans paying him $30 million, not the other way around and it's the fans who give him adulation when things are going well. It just comes with the territory and I think that's fine as long as it doesn't involve stalking and illegal stuff.

That said, the idea that he'd start playing with an entirely new team in the playoffs after a year out of competition always struck me as utterly bizarre. Not really sure why he, the Nets or both created those expectations in the first place. 

[moiso]

I think he’s exaggerating his back pain, but if he is significantly hurt after taking an entire season off that’s not so great either.

[Moranis]

He was in an uncomfortable working environment and then suddenly developed mental illness? Yeah, I don’t buy that for a second. I’ve said this before and have experienced it, a toxic work environment can affect you mentally, but it doesn’t cause mental illness.

On a side note, I think it was stupid for him to say that he was planning to play game 4. They should have just listed him as questionable and then it could be decided whether to play or not right before the game. I believe it would have been stupid for him to play after the team went down 0-3. When they lose the series, they wouldn’t be able to tell themselves, “Well we didn’t have Ben. It could have been different.”

He never said he had a mental illness

“I want to be careful here. I don’t want to overstate my understanding of the situation because I’m not in Ben’s shoes. That’s very important for me not to speak for Ben because I can’t relate to what he’s going through,” Nash said ahead of tipoff for Game 4 on Monday. “There is a mental component with everything. I think Ben has addressed that there is a mental component with what he’s going through. But how much and where he’s at with that is not for me to speak about.

Simmons arrived in Philadelphia near the end of the preseason but cited his mental health as the reason his participation in team activities was so limited. The 76ers and Simmons disagreed about the degrees of access to Simmons that the team and its doctors were allotted to diagnose and affirm his mental health.

I guess there can be a quibble in terms of the definition of "mental illness", but mental health concerns that impact somebody's day to day activities would generally fit that term.  He seemingly would meet criteria for a psychiatric diagnosis, in that his mental health struggles are impacting his day to day activities.

I disagree.  Everyone every day has mental health concerns.  Am I happy?  Is this conversation positive or negative?  How will this action or inaction affect my mood?  etc.  As I've pretty consistently said, I don't believe Simmons has a mental illness and never had one.  I think his phrasing was intentionally vague, and I don't believe anyone has attributed the word "illness" to any person associated with Simmons regarding his mental health.  I believe he was incredibly unhappy in his situation in Philadelphia and he just didn't want to work in that environment so for the sake of his mental health he didn't work (which is why I said that him switching cities very easily might allow him to play - and frankly I think the reason he didn't play in Brooklyn was physical).  People in all walks of life make that same decision every day.  It is just that almost none of them have a multi million dollar contract to play a professional sport so it doesn't make news, isn't reported on, etc. 

[SparzWizard]

Somebody mentioned this that Tiger Woods nearly lost his leg and his life and has had several back surgeries and even he played sooner than Ben Simmons.

Idk how I can defend Simmons for this lol

[moiso]

Somebody mentioned this that Tiger Woods nearly lost his leg and his life and has had several back surgeries and even he played sooner than Ben Simmons.

Idk how I can defend Simmons for this lol

It’s almost as though one of those two guys wanted to come back.

[wdleehi]

The problem is none of his teams are helping him in the public perception department.   (including his agent)


They are the ones putting out information about him coming back.   

[Goldstar88]

He was in an uncomfortable working environment and then suddenly developed mental illness? Yeah, I don’t buy that for a second. I’ve said this before and have experienced it, a toxic work environment can affect you mentally, but it doesn’t cause mental illness.

On a side note, I think it was stupid for him to say that he was planning to play game 4. They should have just listed him as questionable and then it could be decided whether to play or not right before the game. I believe it would have been stupid for him to play after the team went down 0-3. When they lose the series, they wouldn’t be able to tell themselves, “Well we didn’t have Ben. It could have been different.”

He never said he had a mental illness

So chronic mental health issues, but not mental illness. At what point does one become the other?