December 23, 2025
Darren Yamashita/Imagn Images
Ben Simmons finished last season with the Clippers and is currently without an NBA team.
Ben Simmons has taken a pivot into pro fishing while he determines his next potential steps in the NBA.
Simmons, the former No. 1 overall pick by the Sixers in the 2016 NBA Draft, is now the controlling operator of Sport Fishing Championship's South Florida Sails, after investing in the team to become its majority owner.
Simmons, who last played basketball for the Clippers at the end of last season, is a free agent who is still hoping to latch on with a team in the next few months for an NBA return, but as he told Andscape senior writer Marc J.Spears, his new venture into the world of pro fishing doesn't have him in any rush.
“I don’t believe it’s just [about] getting on a team,” Simmons told Spears in a comprehensive Q&A published to Andscape on Tuesday. “So, if I were to play right now, I think I’d fit right into the NBA just given what I can do. But I want to give everything I can to the game. I don’t think there’s any point in just wasting a spot just to be out there. I think that’s a little selfish. And there are guys that do it now. But that’s what it is, the business.
“For me, I’m very blessed to not have to be in that situation where I need to fight right now. But I want to get to the best of my ability and physical peak to compete. Otherwise, it doesn’t really serve me any purpose.”
With an #NBA return on hold, Ben Simmons is angling for success in pro fishing. While working on a healthy comeback to basketball, the three-time NBA All-Star is a team owner in Sport Fishing Championship. @andscape https://t.co/8LlitqWQta
— Marc J. Spears (@MarcJSpears) December 23, 2025
Sixers fans, painfully and bitterly, have their side of the Simmons saga.
Once the shining light of a lengthy rebuild that saw the Sixers floor some historically bad teams, a win of the top pick in the draft lottery for the right to pick Simmons, as the can't-miss superstar out of LSU, in the summer of 2016 was the proof that the pain would all be worth it, that the Process worked, and that Simmons and Joel Embiid would be the championship-caliber pillars of the Sixers for the next decade.
And at first, it did look like all that was going to be true. Once Embiid and Simmons were both healthy and on the floor together for the 2017-18 season, the Sixers were good, Embiid was a near-unstoppable force, and Simmons was putting up numbers not seen by a rookie since Magic Johnson at the start of the 1980s.
The Sixers made it to the playoffs with those two leading the charge, and the future looked bright.
But then they never really got any better from that.
Simmons needed to develop a dependable shot to get to his next level. He never did, and the Sixers could never break past the second round of the playoffs while he was there (and they still haven't). He infamously passed up a dunk late into Game 7 against the Hawks in the 2021 playoffs, which along with an ensuing holdout, accelerated his way out of Philly and to the Brooklyn Nets in the James Harden trade.
Then his repeated back issues piled up, he couldn't stay on the floor, and the Nets bought out his contract last February to move on, while the Clippers took a flyer on him soon after to see if he could rediscover any of his game that could go toward a contributing presence on the floor.
He's been without a team since last season ended, and told Spears he's been working to get fully healthy for a comeback in his time away, all while exploring another new interest.
You can read Simmons' full Q&A with Spears HERE.
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