Contrary to everything we have been led to believe by Joelle Mbid himself, he now says he wants

Simmons to remain with the Sixers.

Joelle Ambide is lying here.

He does not want to play with Ben Simmons, and he said so previously.

He does not want to because Ben Simmons can't shoot and is afraid to

shoot late in games because he doesn't want to go to the line where he also can't shoot. And so

it all falls on Embed, which Embed has said. To be a fan of both the Sixers and Ben Simmons as I am is to be an endangered NBA species at this point.

Because the city of Philadelphia wants Ben out.

And Ben officially now feels the same way.

And so this house is just divided against itself.

But the most maddening part of all of it is that it did not have to be this way.

Today, Brian Windhorst takes us behind the scenes of a complicated, high-stakes negotiation

and a soap opera that is testing the definition

of power in the NBA. I'm Pablo Torre. It's Friday, September 10th. This is ESPN Daily.

So Brian Winhorse, as you might suspect, I think,

I have not been doing so well with the whole Ben Simmons thing.

I mean, I've been preparing myself for this for months now, psychologically,

but it mostly just turns out that I've covered this recording closet

with all of this red conspiracy theory yarn.

Because I am still trying to figure out

how this can end well, maybe,

for both the Sixers and for Ben Simmons,

...