Ben Simmons has been in Sacramento for about a month and the internet has already found its storyline. Clips from Kings training camp show Simmons and teammate Daeqwon Plowden missing badly from behind the arc, including one Simmons attempt that caught nothing but net on the way down without touching rim.
Brenden Nunes of Sactown Sports 1140 shared footage of the two of them bricking threes. The reaction was what you would expect.
“Man this is ugly both of them shots are horrible,” one fan wrote. Another: “Bro didn’t work on anything. Still shooting airballs.” A third, almost sympathetic: “I just can’t rip him anymore. The jokes write themselves.”
The Numbers Have Always Been This Bad
Here is the thing that makes the mockery pointless. Simmons is 5-for-36 from three in his entire NBA career, a 13.9 percent mark. Nobody signed him expecting that to change at 30 years old.
What he has done over the same career is shoot 55.8 percent from the field, because he takes shots at the rim and passes out of everything else. He was the No. 1 overall pick in 2016 and made three All-Star teams before his body and his confidence came apart.
Judging him on a camp three-point drill is like judging a closer on his batting practice swings.
What Sacramento Actually Bought
The Kings gave Simmons a one-year, $3.5 million deal, agreed in early September. That is a low-risk flier on a former All-Star who sat out all of last season rehabbing a surgically repaired back.
The last time he played was 2024-25, when he appeared in 51 games across Brooklyn and the Clippers and averaged 5.0 points, 5.6 assists and 4.7 rebounds. Those are not All-Star numbers. They are also not nothing for a team that went 22-60.
And his coach is talking about the parts of his game that still work. “I love what I see from Ben,” Doug Christie said after the second day of camp. “His communication and attention to detail are really high-level. He can guard everybody. The versatility, when he catches the ball, he can do everything with the basketball.”
That is the pitch. A 6-foot-10 playmaker who can defend five positions is useful even if he never shoots again.
Simmons Sounds Like He Knows the Deal
At media day he was asked what he wants out of this season and did not hedge. “To dominate. Every time I step on the floor, to dominate.”
On the lost year: “I took a lot of time to focus on my body over the season. I feel great and I’m ready to go. No limitations.” He has since called sitting out and letting the back heal fully “the best one” of his options.
He also understands the room he walked into. “There’s no pressure. They don’t expect anything from us,” he said, before adding something more self-aware: “Seeing this team, I think the expectations are low, but I feel like that’s been on me too.”
Plowden Deserves Better Than Collateral Damage
The other guy in the video is a 28-year-old who earned his spot. Daeqwon Plowden went undrafted out of Bowling Green in 2022 after playing in all 154 games of his college career and scoring 1,618 points.
He bounced through the G League and short NBA stints, signed a two-way deal with Sacramento in July 2025, then played 32 games with seven starts and averaged 10.8 points. The Kings re-signed him in July on a two-year, $5.1 million contract. He is not a punchline.
Simmons will get mocked for this all season because the clips are funny and the history is long. Whether the signing works has nothing to do with it.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.