Shaquille O’Neal Seemingly Encourages Ben Simmons to Retire Following Butchered Play

During tonight’s clash against the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden, Ben Simmons had a very forgettable outing. His 0-point performance in the Nets’ 10-point loss prompted fans to now unequivocally ask the Aussie star to retire.

One play of the Nets star particularly gained traction, where the forward received a fastbreak opportunity and soon found himself in the paint less than 10 feet from the basket. Even though the paint was crowded, Simmons should have taken a mid-range shot or found the open team-mate in the corner.

Instead, Simmons unexpectedly took an awkward stop and passed backwards, which caused a turnover and an opposition bucket.

A popular Instagram account, @basketballforever, posted a clip of this play along with a nasty caption that took a shot at Simmons, “If you wanna retire just say it.”

 

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O’Neal was the biggest name in the comments section of this post. The TNT analyst put three fire emojis, implying that he encouraged Simmons to consider retirement as an option.

Shaq seems to root for Ben Simmons to retire pic.twitter.com/hJz3ojeE3Z

— tragicpatek (@tragicpatek) November 18, 2024

Simmons is far away from hanging up his boots. He’s merely 28 years old and has been in the league for seven years. Yes, he did face injury issues in the 2023-2024 campaign. But he revealed to be as healthy as ever before the ongoing season commenced.

Simmons will probably like to stick around in the NBA unless he is pushed out of the league for his underwhelming performances and injury issues. However, Shaq’s contention with Simmons is nothing new.

Shaq has bashed Simmons on numerous instances

The Big Aristotle’s frustrations with Simmons seem to have drastically increased over the past year. O’Neal has largely attacked Simmons for being unavailable for games, and has also denounced him for supposedly faking a back injury.

“The back thing, I let that go the first year, I’m not letting that go three years in a row… Everybody knows in this world the back injury is the thing that you can’t really check,” Shaq said.

“I’d wanna learn how you can make $80 million and play in 55 games. Teach me,” Shaq said in another instance.

Supporters would’ve hoped for Simmons to get motivated after hearing these harsh statements. However, he hasn’t been able to silence his doubters. Through the first month of this season, the 6ft 10” player has averaged career-lows in points (5.3 per game), rebounds (5.8 per game), and other major stats.