76ers’ Matisse Thybulle on Ben Simmons Narrative: ‘He Was Thrown Under the Bus’

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Philadelphia 76ers guard Matisse
Thybulle came to the defense of teammate Ben Simmons for how the
Sixers’ run in the 2021 NBA playoffs came to an end against the
Atlanta Hawks in June.

Simmons, who scored just 19 points over
the second-round series’ final three contests, came under fire after
he passed up a wide-open layup with the 76ers trailing by two with
three minutes, 30 seconds left in the fourth quarter of Game 7. They were
ultimately eliminated with a 103-96 loss.

Philly center Joel Embiid was among
those to question the point guard’s decision after the season-ending
defeat.

“I mean, I’ll be honest. I thought
the turning point was when we—I don’t know how to say it—but I
thought the turning point was just we had an open shot and we made
one free throw and we missed the other, and then they came down and
scored,” Embiid told reporters.

Thybulle doesn’t think the narrative
that Simmons’ decision to pass the ball with more than three minutes
left in a close game was the key moment is fair.

In fact, the 24-year-old defensive
standout said Friday on The Old Man and the Three podcast (h/t Ky Carlin of SixersWire) he believes his foul on Hawks guard Kevin
Huerter while he was shooting a three with 54 seconds left was the
biggest mistake:

“He was thrown under the bus. You
asked me if I had been booed or people been mad at me, I made the
foul that lost us the last game, and I received almost no…there was
a little bit on Twitter, but like the Ben hate was so much
louder…just build the frame of reference, like I lost us the game
in which lost us the series, and no one really spoke about it, but
they wanted to talk about the passing up the dunk and passing it to
me more than my foul.”

Huerter made all three free throws to
extend Atlanta’s lead to four, and it held on from there.

It wasn’t the first time Simmons was
used as a scapegoat for the Sixers’ team-wide failures to live up to
championship-level expectations in recent years, and now it appears
that status as a popular target for negativity has taken a toll.

ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported
Tuesday the three-time All-Star isn’t going to report for training
camp in Philadelphia and “intends to never play another game for
the franchise” while awaiting a trade.

Thybulle explained on The Old Man
and the Three he doesn’t like how the situation deteriorated:

“Anyways, but I think that both
sides, play a decent role in it, right? Like, neither sides really
helped themselves through the situation. Whoever started it,
whoever’s making it worse at this point doesn’t really matter but,
either side has played a pretty decent role in the situation that we
find ourselves in right now and on a human level as like his
teammate, like, as a friend.

“You hate to see people put in this
situation that’s so heavily covered by the media, because people lose
sight of this human aspect of all of us as athletes, especially in
these times, especially in controversial times where we’re looked at
as like as a commodity. I don’t even know exactly like what people
consider us in these moments but it’s not as humans, and I just saw
on a personal level I really do feel for him because this would suck
for anybody.”

Trying to make a blockbuster trade at
this stage of the offseason, with the regular season only a few weeks
away, is tricky because most teams have already handled a majority of
their key summer decisions between free agency, the draft and other
trades.

That’s why there’s usually a lull in
trades from the latter stages of the offseason until at least a month
into the regular season so teams can evaluate where they stand, but
the Sixers surely don’t want to wait that long if Simmons is going to
stand firm on his plans to never play for the team again.

Sam Amico of HoopsWire reported the
76ers have engaged in “multiple” conversations about possibly
moving the 25-year-old guard, and he named the Denver Nuggets as a
potential sleeper in the trade talks.

The Sixers open the regular season Oct.
20 when they visit Zion Williamson and the New Orleans Pelicans.