The old-school case for paying Ben Simmons $3.5 million to never touch a basketball

The Sacramento Kings just handed the former No. 1 overall pick a $3.5 million lifeline, and frankly, it is about time a front office rewarded the lost art of completely opting out of the sport.

The cowards in the analytics department are already hyperventilating. They see a US$3.5 million contract for a guy who just spent the entire 2025-26 campaign meticulously rehabilitating his back and leg injuries by remaining strictly horizontal, and they call it a waste. To them, I say: you don't know ball. I sat next to a prominent Western Conference executive at Summer League—I won't name names, but his initials rhyme with 'Marl Mumbonis'—and we both agreed that this league has a problem. Everyone is obsessed with stats. Points, rebounds, minutes played. But what about the intangibles? What about the sheer psychological dominance of a man who can secure a fully guaranteed, multi-million dollar bag without ever accidentally breaking a sweat? The media wants you to believe Ben Simmons is a bust. I am here to tell you that he is the vanguard of a new, highly lucrative era of athletic abstinence.

Ask any real fan. Back in my day, basketball was a man’s game. It was about intimidation. You didn't just shoot the ball the second you touched it like these AAU kids today, sprinting up and down the court like golden retrievers chasing a tennis ball. Sometimes you held it. Sometimes you stared down the defense for twenty seconds, passed it into the fifth row, and dared the coach to sub you out. Ben Simmons has simply evolved that classic, hard-nosed mentality to its absolute pinnacle. He isn't just refusing to shoot; he is refusing to lace up his sneakers. That takes a level of discipline you simply cannot teach. You watch him on the sidelines in a $4,000 silk cardigan, perfectly still, radiating absolute indifference to the fast break happening three feet away, and the eye test tells you everything you need to know. That is a franchise cornerstone.

The Sacramento Kings understand this. Vivek Ranadivé and the front office didn't just throw AU$4.9 million at a Melbourne-born guard on a whim. They recognized a market inefficiency. You have guys out there tearing their ACLs, ruining their trade value by actually participating in contact sports. Simmons is pristine. His cartilage is perfectly preserved in amber. By paying him to sit at the end of the bench and occasionally nod at De'Aaron Fox, the Kings are acquiring an elite aesthetic asset. When opposing teams come to the arena, they will look over and see a man who has conquered the NBA economy so thoroughly that his mere presence in the building costs more than their entire coaching staff's mortgage. That is how you establish a winning culture. You demoralize the enemy with pure, unadulterated financial leverage.

Of course, the blue-collar, working-class fans are furious. They cry into their $14 stadium beers, clutching their replica jerseys, complaining that he hasn't hit a jumper since the Obama administration. These people disgust me. They have absolutely no concept of the mental toll it takes to be Ben Simmons. Have you ever tried to rehabilitate a leg injury while maintaining a robust presence at Paris Fashion Week? I have. I pulled a hamstring on a golf trip to Cabo with a mid-major athletic director back in '09, and let me tell you, the flight back in first class was agonizing. The turbulence alone nearly derailed my recovery. Ben Simmons is fighting a war his own body started, and he is doing it with the quiet dignity of a man who knows his guaranteed money clears every 1st and 15th regardless of whether he knows what city the arena is in.

Modern players are soft. They talk about load management because they are tired from playing back-to-backs in January. They sit out one game against the Hornets and think they are making a statement. Simmons doesn’t believe in load management; he believes in load elimination. He has bypassed the flawed concept of the 82-game season entirely. By sitting out the entirety of last year, he proved he isn't a slave to the schedule. He is his own master. The Kings are getting a guy who is 100 percent fresh, physically and mentally, precisely because he has severed all emotional attachment to the sport of basketball. You cannot rattle a player who does not care if the ball goes in the hoop. He is the ultimate stoic warrior.

This will be Simmons' fourth club, which the blog boys are naturally framing as a negative. They type with their soft, uncalloused hands from their parents' basements, calling him a locker room problem. Wrong again. Moving from Philadelphia to Brooklyn to Sacramento isn't a sign of failure; it is the mark of a savvy veteran spreading his unique brand of non-participation across the continent. He is an ambassador for stillness. Every locker room needs a guy who can look a struggling rookie in the eye and say that it doesn't matter if they missed that free throw, because eventually, we all turn to dust, and the direct deposit still hits.

People want to talk about his shooting mechanics. They want to post videos of him passing out of an open dunk against the Hawks years ago. Get over it. I had dinner with a league official last week, and he told me point-blank that the NBA is looking into ways to make the game less physically demanding. Simmons was just ahead of the curve. He saw the writing on the wall. Why risk a high-ankle sprain driving to the basket when you can simply hand the ball to a teammate and jog gently toward the corner? That is high-IQ basketball. That is seeing the floor. He sees the floor so well that he prefers to observe it from a padded folding chair wearing a bespoke linen suit. You won't see him whining at a postgame presser, mostly because he left the arena in the third quarter.

The Sacramento medical staff is reportedly thrilled to have him. Usually, these trainers have to deal with athletes who are desperate to rush back onto the court. They have to hide their helmets, so to speak. With Simmons, there is no rushing. There is only the process. If a doctor tells him he needs four weeks to rest a mild calf strain, Simmons will give them four months, just to be safe. He respects the medical profession. He is a patron of the physical therapy arts. You don't see that kind of deference to authority in today's entitlement generation.

What the Kings have secured for a mere $3.5 million is a daily masterclass in boundaries. In an era where athletes are expected to give their blood, sweat, and tears to the franchise, Simmons has drawn a firm line in the sand. He will give you his physical presence in the arena, provided the temperature is heavily regulated, and he will give you occasional high-fives during timeouts, provided he is not holding a Gatorade cup. Anything beyond that is a violation of his personal peace.

So go ahead, write off the Sacramento Kings. Laugh at the one-year lifeline. Tweet your little jokes about his shooting percentage. But when April rolls around, and the rest of the Western Conference is battered, bruised, and begging for a rest day, Ben Simmons will be sitting exactly where he was in October: at the very edge of the bench, completely unbothered by the concept of competition. He will have earned every single penny of that AU$4.9 million without suffering the indignity of a postgame ice bath. And if you don't think that's a statement win for the front office, then you simply don't know what it takes to win in this league anymore.