Ben Simmons is officially out for the season, Sixers president of basketball operations Bryan Colangelo said Friday.
Simmons had a CT scan on his injured right foot Thursday in New York which showed that the foot is not yet fully healed.
He'll have another scan in about a month, Colangelo said.
"I have always known that there was a desire to get him back on the court when healthy," Colangelo said. "We've always anticipated there would be an opportunity for him to play, hopefully this season.
"But there was always the outside chance that it didn't happen because there wasn't complete and full healing. And we weren't going to put Ben Simmons in a place where he was (susceptible) to a re-fracture.
"There are genetic things that change the healing patterns of people. So if everybody had done their research and saw that most Jones fractures took 3 to 4 months, great. But it's not 3 to 4 months in every case, it's 3 to 4 months in most cases."
"He's heartbroken. He wants to play. He wants to be out there. It's eating him alive, I'm sure."
Simmons suffered the injury, a Jones fracture, on Sept. 30, the final day of training camp. Aside from a few hopeful comments from Brett Brown, no timetable for Simmons' return was ever officially given by the Sixers.
As recently as Thursday, Brown reiterated that he expected Simmons to play this season.
"I personally would like to see him play this season. I don't backpedal from that," Brown said Thursday. "I think my comments are really very much influenced by his reciprocal desire to play this year, which we all respect. Everybody's got clandestine conspiracy theories on why he might not want to play. I know in my heart and speaking to him, he wants to get on a court and play basketball again.
"I hope he can do that, too. If for some reason he can't, we'll deal with it. But I think it would help him to play NBA basketball and get his competitive juices going again if the doctors point us in that direction."
Simmons can't, and now it's up to the Sixers to deal with it. They surely would have wanted a look at him this season to better determine their needs for the future and how other pieces fit. [[247269581, C]]
