Getty Sean Marks, Brooklyn Nets general manager
The Brooklyn Nets officially announced that their All-Star forward Ben Simmons would not rejoin the team this season because of a nerve impingement in his back. After being traded to Brooklyn from the Philadelphia 76ers last February, Simmons was supposed to be an integral part of a Nets team vying to compete for a world title. But after one and a half seasons with the franchise, he has appeared in only 42 games.
There is a lot of noise surrounding the Simmons’ trade and whether or not the Nets got fleeced because of his lack of production since arriving, but Nets’ general manager Sean Marks says that he hopes his star forward uses the negativity as fuel for an even stronger comeback.
“I do feel for him because I know he wants to be out here,” Marks said to ESPN’s Nick Friedell on March 28.
“I know he wants to be part of this team. Nobody likes being told ‘You didn’t amount to what you should have, and it shouldn’t be this, you should have done this, and so forth’ I hope he uses all of this as whatever you want to call it, chalkboard fodder for motivation, and attack [his rehab]. But I think he would fit with these guys we’ve got, and he fits for multiple reasons. So, we hope that he’s back — and that he’s healthy, ready to go.”
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Sean Marks Gets Candid on Ben Simmons
Simmons has traveled an undesirable road since he arrived in Brooklyn last February. During his ramp-up period, the Nets medical team discovered a herniated disc in his back, which prevented him from making his Nets debut last season. It also required him to have an off-season corrective procedure last May. Simmons also dealt with knee soreness on several different occasions this season, and the final blow was the nerve impingement in his back that has sidelined him for the duration of this season.
It is an unfortunate series of events for a player who wants nothing more than to return to his All-Star form. But Marks says that amid his darkest hour, the best thing the Nets can do for Simmons is to support him.
“Same thing we’ve done in the past, support him. This is a young man that has been through a very traumatic and pretty arduous last couple of years here. And this is not news that he wants to hear. He didn’t want specialists telling him, ‘Hey look, here’s the best thing for you.’ The good news is they were in unison in their plan for a full recovery,” Marks told ESPN.
“I worked hard with these doctors, all the different specialists as well as Bernie Lee, his new agent, to come up with a plan that’s hopefully going to get him back, and back to being the Ben we’ve all seen.”
Ben Simmons Could Have Longer Recovery Period
Simmons knows he has a long road ahead of him before he returns to the elite status many people have grown accustomed to seeing from him. In November, the Nets star told Brian Lewis of the New York Post that the timeline for a full recovery from his back injury is 18 months.
But Dr. Neel Anand of Cedars-Sinai Spine Center in Los Angeles told Lewis that if Simmons says it will take 18 months to fully recover, he likely has a much longer road ahead.
“If he’s saying 18 months, someone told him that. Someone will say that when you know you’ve got a significant nerve problem. He had a microdiscectomy. You have an operation to remove a herniated disk that’s pressing on a nerve,” Dr. Anand told Lewis via the New York Post.
“The surgery only takes the disc out and takes the pressure away from the nerve. It doesn’t make the nerve normal. … So, the nerve is damaged, injured, or whatever. The nerve has to recover on its own. So that someone told him that 18 months means he had a significant nerve problem. And yes, it would be right to say it might take 18 months for it to get better. Only time will say.”