Ben Simmons

'What the hell is going on?': Inside Simmons' 'cold' and 'awkward' Philly homecoming.

“Everyone thought that Simmons needed to get it over with and show up in front of Sixers fans and take the boos. It was everything that Simmons needed the evening to be while the Sixers lived out a worst-case scenario. Everyone was all over him and all they wanted to do all night was boo the hell out of him.” “It just felt like when you’re watching two parents, two sides of a divorce meet up at a family function for the first time. Was that the Nets being ultra-protective. But the security guys are screaming at people: ‘No video, no video’. Was that Ben Simmons saying something? “It was a mental hurdle they felt he had to clear and they did their best to clear it with him.” “The reason they were so locked in wasn’t just: We’ve got Ben’s back. It was an odd scene.” “Specifically, KD and Kyrie knew what they were getting into to, they’d been in that environment before. “Before the game had started, before he had walked out with Patty Mills onto the floor, he was talking to the social media guy from the Sixers and the security guys,” Friedell said. [They were] saying: ‘You quit on us.

The Nets quickly silence Philadelphia's ready reception for Ben Simmons while making a point of their own.

He is paired with yet another perennial superstar in Embiid and in first five games together — all wins — were a honeymoon of equal parts dominance and eye-opening success. By then, Simmons will probably be playing, and he will have to speak, play and win for himself. But such emotion represented the fierce loyalty each team has toward its new star in place of the old one that no longer wanted to be there. Seth Curry turned and talked to his former teammates on the Sixers bench after drilling yet another 3-pointer, a reminder that he might not have been pleased to have been so readily included in the Harden-Simmons trade. “We definitely felt like Ben was on our heart,” Irving said. Why spit in the face of Sixers fans? Their performance was a glaring contrast to their own decorated former teammate, James Harden. The former Kia MVP, who played all of 16 total games with both his co-stars in Brooklyn, shot a wretched 3-for-17, including 0-for-10 inside the arc. “It just felt good to quiet all of them down midway through the game,” Durant said. “It was very quiet towards the end. The three-time All-Star is continuing to recover from a back injury that has sidelined him since being swapped for Harden in a blockbuster deal at the trade deadline. The avalanche of boos that greeted him was every bit as loud and relentless as expected. His new Brooklyn teammates applauded the crowd’s effort, all of them smiling and laughing because by then the scoreboard had rendered Philadelphia’s famous scorn irrelevant.