Why Ben Simmons Got Paid $106,000,000 To Stop Playing Basketball Ian Mckellen [CWC6vfvIe6k]

Ben Simmons got paid $33 million for a single NBA season and played zero games. Over the next three years he collected more than $106 million to play just 57 games, and nobody in basketball could figure out how to make it stop. He was the number one overall pick, a three time All-Star, the player LeBron James once told he could be better than LeBron. Then one passed up dunk in a Game 7 turned the most gifted athlete in the building into the most expensive man in the sport to do nothing centerpoint outage at all.

This is the full story, told as a money story instead of a jump shot story. We trace it from a teenage Ben Simmons at LeBron James's skills academy to the number one pick in the 2016 draft, then Rookie of the Year and three straight All-Star teams. We break down the 2021 Game 7 collapse against the Atlanta Hawks, the wide open dunk he passed up, and Doc Rivers questioning whether Simmons could ever be a championship point guard. Then the contract takes over: the roughly $170 million fully guaranteed extension, the Philadelphia 76ers holdout, the $360,000 a game ecole bedford enseignants suspendus in withheld fines, the union grievance, the James Harden trade that cost two extra first round picks, the back surgeries in Brooklyn, and the $39 million buyout that finally ended it.

The Ben Simmons saga is not really about a broken jump shot. It is about guaranteed money, and the bet a team makes when it hands a 23 year old a nine figure contract it can never take back. Teams can scout the body. They cannot scout the mind. As Commissioner Adam Silver put it, it is a problem when players are paid not to play. The problem is that the system was built to do exactly that.

CHAPTERS

0:00 - $33 Million, Zero Games

4:30 - Game 7 vs Atlanta

7:30 - Why The Checks Never Stopped

11:55 - Traded For Two First-Round Picks

16:05 - Paid Not To Play

TOPICS COVERED

Ben Simmons' roughly $170 million max contract and how NBA guaranteed money works

The 2021 Game 7 passed up dunk against the Atlanta Hawks

The Philadelphia 76ers holdout and the $19 million in withheld fines

The James Harden trade that cost Philadelphia two first round picks

Ben Simmons' Brooklyn Nets buyout, $106 million for 57 games

Adam Silver and the "paid not to play" problem in the NBA

SOURCES + CITATIONS

Salary and contract figures via Spotrac and HoopsHype. Reporting from ESPN, The Athletic, NBC Sports, and the Associated Press on the holdout, the grievance settlement, and the Brooklyn buyout. Quotes from the postgame Game 7 press conferences with Doc Rivers and Joel Embiid, and Commissioner Adam Silver's public comments on guaranteed austin vs minnesota contracts. Archival NBA game footage is used under fair use for commentary and criticism.

Shoes With Laces breaks down the money, the contracts, and the business behind basketball's biggest names. New stories every Friday.

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