Ben Simmons

The Nets quickly silence Philadelphia's ready reception for Ben Simmons while making a point of their own.

He is paired with yet another perennial superstar in Embiid and in first five games together — all wins — were a honeymoon of equal parts dominance and eye-opening success. By then, Simmons will probably be playing, and he will have to speak, play and win for himself. But such emotion represented the fierce loyalty each team has toward its new star in place of the old one that no longer wanted to be there. Seth Curry turned and talked to his former teammates on the Sixers bench after drilling yet another 3-pointer, a reminder that he might not have been pleased to have been so readily included in the Harden-Simmons trade. “We definitely felt like Ben was on our heart,” Irving said. Why spit in the face of Sixers fans? Their performance was a glaring contrast to their own decorated former teammate, James Harden. The former Kia MVP, who played all of 16 total games with both his co-stars in Brooklyn, shot a wretched 3-for-17, including 0-for-10 inside the arc. “It just felt good to quiet all of them down midway through the game,” Durant said. “It was very quiet towards the end. The three-time All-Star is continuing to recover from a back injury that has sidelined him since being swapped for Harden in a blockbuster deal at the trade deadline. The avalanche of boos that greeted him was every bit as loud and relentless as expected. His new Brooklyn teammates applauded the crowd’s effort, all of them smiling and laughing because by then the scoreboard had rendered Philadelphia’s famous scorn irrelevant.

Making his first appearance in Philly since demanding a trade last summer, Ben Simmons watched as the Nets dismantled the Sixers with shocking ease in a ...

And with the Sixers holding near the top of the Eastern Conference standings, there’s a reasonably good chance these two teams could meet in the first round of the playoffs. Even after the proceedings had long since gotten out of hand with eight minutes left and the Sixers down 30, the building exploded in another round of thunderous boos when Simmons stood up from his seat to retrieve a dead ball for the referees. All of it has informed the divorce with a particularly acute pain. Simmons had no interaction with any Philadelphia player – hardly a surprise amid this week’s legitimately hilarious news that he changed his phone number without telling anyone on the team – though he did say a quick hello to Sixers coach Doc Rivers before the start of the second half. And not because the game itself was in any way competitive, for it certainly was not. It was the type of night that only the NBA in all its soap-operatic, meme-friendly, hyper-petty splendor can deliver.