The Philadelphia 76ers were never able to get past the Eastern Conference Semifinals during Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons’ time as teammates. The team came close on a few occasions, but ultimately, the Sixers just could not get over that final hump in their efforts to bring a title to the City of Brotherly Love.
This time was filled with questions about whether or not Philly could win with the two of them taking the floor alongside one another, which beget questions about other things, like whether or not their personalities meshed. This was not helped by the fact that, right after Simmons’ trade to the Brooklyn Nets, Embiid posted a meme of a person going to the funeral of “one of my biggest haters” on Twitter.
In a new interview with Nick Friedell of ESPN, Simmons addressed a number of topics, including his relationship with Embiid. After telling him that “I don’t talk to Jo. We never really spoke,” Simmons went on to dive into some more details about their time as teammates.
“I don’t think there was really a relationship there,” Simmons said. “Like in terms of a friendship? You can try as hard as you want to try to be close to somebody, be their friend, whatever it is, but everyone is different as people, so for me, it’s never personal. I don’t have any anger or hate towards him. He is who he is and I am who I am. And we’ve got our personal lives. And work is basketball, so in that moment, my goal is to win and I got to win with Jo. He’s a great player, we just didn’t get it done.”
During an appearance on Draymond Green’s podcast last year, Embiid said that “a lot of things don’t make sense” about the end of Simmons’ time with the Sixers and clained that “I don’t have any problems with him.”