Getty Kyrie Irving (left), formerly of the Brooklyn Nets.
It’s been a bad start to the season for the Brooklyn Nets and specifically for point guard Ben Simmons.
But Kyrie Irving is standing up for his oft-criticized teammate, essentially telling members of the media in an NSFW statement to back off.
“You guys keep coming in here asking me, like, ‘What about Ben? What about Ben?’ He hasn’t played in two years. Give him give him a f****** chance. We stay on his s***. … You just [have to] stay on him. We’re just here to give him positive affirmations and just let him hoop,” Irving said after Brooklyn’s 110-99 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks on October 26.
Kyrie Irving on Ben Simmons:
“You guys keep coming in here asking me like what about Ben? He hasn’t played in two years. Give him give him a f–king chance. We stay on his s—. You just stay on him. We’re just here to give him positive affirmations and just let him hoop.”
Simmons Working His Way Back, Irving Says
Simmons, who missed all of the 2021-22 season with a back injury and then mental health issues, is averaging 5.3 points per game, just over 10 points lower than his career average. Through his first four games as a Net, he’s attempting 5.0 shots per game, less than 50% of his career average.
Irving seems to be encouraging observers to give Simmons, who played the first four years of his career with the Philadelphia 76ers, the benefit of the doubt as he adjusts to a new team, a new system and the rigors of playing in the NBA. He said it’s not Simmons’ job to be the Nets’ savior.
“It’s not an individual’s job to go out there and be Superman. He doesn’t have to,” Irving said. “I like to say a phrase my dad says: ‘A hero is nothing but a sandwich.'”
When a reporter told Irving he was caught on mic during the game saying, “Shoot it, Ben!” Irving said, “It’s just a clip [and not] a full game.”
“This is a big-picture thing,” he said. “We want Ben to be aggressive every single play, and we want him to get an assist every single play, want him to rebound, want him to play against the best player, want him to do all the things that we know he’s capable of. But at this time, he’s going to have to work himself into his own confidence and feel good about himself. … The reality is we’re going to have to try this experiment every single night till we get the right recipe.”
The Nets’ Support of Ben Simmons
Not much has gone right for the Nets in the first 10 days of the season. They are 1-3 and currently in 11th place in the Eastern Conference. Beyond the scoring of Irving (27.3 points per game) and Kevin Durant (32.2), the Nets aren’t getting much from other players. Center Nic Claxton has 12.8 points and 9.0 rebounds per game, but the Nets expected Simmons to be the third scorer.
However, head coach Steve Nash told reporters after the Bucks game about lowered expectations, saying the most important thing is that Simmons has joy in being back on the court.
“For me, it’s trying to take the risk off the table,” Nash said. “I’m not expecting him to be 100 percent in the short term, but I want him to try to find that [joy].”
Before the season, Irving told ESPN’s Nick Friedell for a story published October 15 about the team’s support for Irving.
“I think one of our greatest strengths as a human community is humanizing each other’s lives. He’s a human being, so he’s going to respond his way,” Irving said. “And he’s going to deal with things his way, and we have to honor and respect that. That’s what people with integrity do. Not everyone lives by those same moral principles, so yeah, as a leader, I feel like it’s my responsibility to protect him, but I also must understand he has to go through things on his own. And when he asks for help, just be there for him.
“I don’t want to say I have all the answers figured out myself because it’s an ongoing battle myself, just dealing with those ebbs and flows,” he said. “But for him, I just don’t want to see him get caught up in the same nonsense.”