With the second half of the NBA season starting this week, Joel Embiid insists he has put the Ben Simmons saga behind him.
“I did a lot of chasing around trying to get him back and try to make him feel comfortable again,” Embiid told ESPN’s Malika Andrews on Tuesday of his former teammate. “It was tough.
“I didn’t care anymore.”
Simmons was involved in a messy exit from Philadelphia after he requested a trade and then sat out for months while racking up fines and refusing to play. He reportedly told the team in November that he wasn’t mentally ready to play. He said earlier this month mental health had “nothing to do with it.”
Finally, Simmons was dealt to the Brooklyn Nets in exchange for James Harden.
“It was a bunch of things I was dealing with as a person in my personal life that I don’t really want to go into depth with,” Simmons said with the Nets last week. “But I’m here now. It’s a blessing to be in an organization like this.”
The 25-year-old did say that he has had “some dark times over these last six months,” but he didn’t elaborate.
Meanwhile, Embiid’s feelings toward his former teammate changed over the standoff.
In October, Embiid said that “I don’t care about that man” when Simmons first started his holdout. He then tweeted an incredible meme after the trade went down.
“It’s unfortunate that, for him, having his own team and, I guess, being the star, was more of his priorities,” Embiid said after the trade. “I always thought that everything was great, the fit was great, but unfortunately Ben thought that it wasn’t. But, you know, we all move on.”
So even though he’s made it very clear how he feels about Simmons and everything that happened, Embiid said at this point he’s all good — and he feels like he did plenty to try and help Simmons when he was still in Philadelphia.
“I could have said a lot of stuff, but I still did whatever I thought was good to do as a teammate,” Embiid told ESPN.