Simmons simply needed slightly bit mentorship.
As a big level guard, Ben Simmons is a bit an anomaly. No participant understands that greater than Magic Johnson, who received 5 championships with the Los Angeles Lakers. Based on 76ers GM Elton Model, Simmons was truly trying to meet with Johnson for some pleasant recommendation on his sport, however Model refused.
“Lakers common supervisor] Rob Pelinka referred to as me and stated ‘Hey, we’re listening to Ben desires to speak to Corridor Famers, championship-level gamers, and Magic is on the checklist. We want authorization for him to satisfy up.’ And I stated ‘No.’ That is over a month in the past, so I stated no,” Model stated in keeping with ESPN.
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Johnson who course nonetheless works with the Lakers confirmed that Simmons needed to talk with him however that he’d solely do it if the Sixers accepted.
“Simmons] reached out to me, to not me straight, to the Lakers to seek out out if we are able to get collectively this summer time,” Johnson defined. “I stated, ‘Hey, you bought to clear it with the league,’ and if all people — the Sixers signal f, we signal f, the league signal f — high quality, I’ll try this. But when all people does not signal f, then we won’t get collectively.”
Whereas the difficulty has been dropped for each groups, the NBA remains to be investigating to see if the contact between Simmons and the Lakers broke any league guidelines, per Adrian Wojnarowski ESPN.