Ben Simmons barely has more points than fouls
Through four games, Ben Simmons of the Brooklyn Nets has 21 points. He also has 18 personal fouls, plus two technical fouls, which means his scoring is still outpacing his fouling, but it's close.
In Wednesday night's loss to the Milwaukee Bucks, Simmons scored early in the first quarter on a contested layup, and then got a technical foul after he complained to the referee about not getting a foul call. He scored two points and gave one back when Grayson Allen sunk the technical free throw.
Simmons also racked up four personal fouls in the game, the same as his number of points. And his teammate Kyrie Irving was audibly frustrated by Simmons' offensive reluctance. After Iriving passed to Simmons under the basket, and Simmons immediately threw it out to Kevin Durant behind the three-point arc, courtside mics caught Kyrie shouting "Shoot it, Ben!"
Simmons has fouled out of two of Brooklyn's four games thus far, and complained to reporters about the "bull----" nature of the calls after Ja Morant baited him into fouling out in the Nets' game against Memphis.
"It's the NBA. It's not college. It's not high school. Some people are going to get hit, some people bleed; it's basketball," Simmons said after the game, though "Some people bleed" might not be as compelling an argument as Simmons thinks it is. And he found the technical just as befuddling:
"There was no explanation for that call," Simmons said. "Same as the technical foul. He said because Ja had a tech, he had to give me a tech because I said something. It wasn't malicious. It wasn't at the referee. I thought it was just a part of basketball. People have emotions. I didn't cuss at him. I didn't call him anything. I just said it was a bulls--- call, which it was, and f---, let me get out of here. I just don't want to get fined."
Perhaps inspired by Simmons, Steve Nash got his first ejection as an NBA head coach in the third quarter of the game.
Simmons is still rusty after sitting out a season, and perhaps that's why his normal aggressive defense has turned into excessive fouling. But if he wants his points to stay ahead of his fouls, he's got to "Shoot it, Ben!"
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