76ers’ Doc Rivers Says He Had ‘Good’ Talk with Ben Simmons After Trade to Nets

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Philadelphia 76ers head coach Doc Rivers appeared on ESPN’s The VC Show with Vince Carter on Tuesday and said he’s spoken to Ben Simmons once since his fallout with the organization and subsequent trade to the Brooklyn Nets.

Rivers said he believed all parties could have worked the situation out, though that ultimately didn’t happen (4:30 mark):

“That one comment [made after the Game 7 loss to the Atlanta Hawks in the 2021 Eastern Conference Semifinals] had nothing to do with why Ben wanted to leave. Let me just say that. It was a lot of things—as Ben told me, and publicly now—that happened long before I got there. What frustrated me was that I still think it shouldn’t have been enough to want to leave. I just didn’t. I told Ben that. I kept telling him that. ‘This is not why you want to leave the team. You work these things out.’ They didn’t get worked out.

“We’ve had one talk—a long, long talk—but we did have one good talk. Ben called me, afterwards, which I thought was great, and we had a good talk. The point was he was already leaving and … listen, I really believe, even though 99 percent of the people didn’t, that we could make this work with Ben and [Joel Embiid] and the team. Because I’m built that way, that’s what coaches have to do.”

This article will be updated soon to provide more information and analysis.

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