Andrew Bogut’s allegations about Ben Simmons’ Australian career

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Philadelphia 76ers star Ben Simmons is once again making headlines. This time around he is embroiled in a scandal involving the Australian government and the national team over alleged threats from the former to withdraw financial support for the national basketball program. To make that tale even juicier, the whistleblower here is former Golden State Warriors big man and Australian national team icon Andrew Bogut.

In a recent episode of his Rogue Bogues podcast, Bogut made shocking revelations about the Victorian Australian government threatening to withdraw $ 148 million in funding if the Australian national team refused to play against Simmons in a few warm-up matches in 2019:

The call was given to Basketball Australia [from the Victorian government], he was basically saying this: If you don’t let Ben Simmons play those two games in Melbourne, that money is gone, we’re not giving it to basketball in Victoria, Bogut said on the podcast, via Keith Pompey from the SunHerald. We’ll do our best to get that number as close to zero as possible, and you’ll never get another dime from the Victorian government again.

He [then Australian coach Andrej Lemanis] came to the group, said this is the situation we are facing He said, if we don’t let Ben play in these two games, we will lose funds for the base. He said, I can’t have that in my soul, in my heart, I can’t have that taken away from developing young children… I let Ben play.

To be clear, Bogut is talking here about two warm-up matches leading up to the 2019 FIBA ​​World Cup. These were a few high-profile games against the United States, which the Australian national team apparently did not want Simmons to play in due to his decision to withdraw from the squad for the World Cup. The government, however, had other ideas.

Bogut’s claims were so outrageous that they even prompted an official statement from the government, which unsurprisingly denied any claims regarding the alleged withdrawal of financial support:

The Victorian government made no such threats regarding the State Basketball Center, which was a 2018 election engagement, a Victorian government spokeswoman said in a statement to the newspaper. The point is, Ben Simmons did not play in any game and despite this all of the Victorian government funding commitments to basketball were honored and never questioned.

As the above statement indicates, Ben Simmons actually missed both games. He trained with the national team but ultimately skipped exhibition matches against the US team. Needless to say, this only made matters worse and made the optics even more deplorable.

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