Ben Simmons has not played an NBA game since April 2025. On Monday, at the Sacramento Kings’ media day, he was asked why.

“I think that was more so my body. It wasn’t about if I wanted to play. All these people talk about, I don’t love the game. That’s bulls—,” he told reporters, Bleacher Report reported.

“I love this game. If I didn’t I wouldn’t have taken that year to focus on myself and get back to where I’m at.”

The Australian guard sat out the entire 2025-26 season with the back and leg problems that had followed him through his short spell with the LA Clippers. In place of a training-camp storyline, AAP reported, he bought a controlling stake in a professional sport fishing team and, by his own account, did not pick up a basketball for months.

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Sacramento gave him a route back. The Kings signed Simmons on September 8 to a one-year veteran-minimum deal worth $3.5 million, adding a 30-year-old playmaker to a roster that finished 22-60 last season and has not been in the playoffs since 2023. His path to the deal ran through an August training camp in Melbourne with the Australian Boomers national team.

From Philadelphia cornerstone to punchline

The arc since the 2020 season has been one of the most-tracked in the league: three All-Star nods with the Philadelphia 76ers, then a bitter fallout and a season-long holdout, a stalled reset in Brooklyn, and a brief cameo with the Clippers that produced 51 games, 5.0 points, 5.6 assists and 4.7 rebounds in 22.0 minutes per contest, and another shutdown.

The bill in games missed is heavy. Between 2021-22 and 2024-25, Bleacher Report noted, Simmons appeared in only 108 regular-season games.

The target: to dominate

Asked at media day what he wanted from the coming season, he did not hedge.

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“To dominate. Every time I step on the floor, to dominate,” he said.

He also framed the Kings’ low bar as an opportunity.

“There’s no pressure. They don’t expect anything from us, so I think for us to go out there and show that we’re capable of winning games and having a good team, that’s doable.”

The Kings open the 2026-27 season on October 21 on the road against the Clippers, the same franchise that gave Simmons his last NBA appearance.

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