Ben Simmons is headed to Sacramento.
The former No. 1 overall pick has agreed to a one-year deal with the Kings, according to his agents, as reported by ESPN’s Shams Charania and Marc J. Spears.
The contract is worth $3.5MM, which lines up with Simmons’ veteran minimum. He has nine years of NBA service, so his minimum salary is $3,524,115, while the Kings will count $2,449,421 against the cap.
It’s not yet clear whether the deal is fully guaranteed.
For Sacramento, this is a swing on a player whose career has had sharp highs and frustrating setbacks. Simmons missed the entire 2016/17 season because of a foot injury, then came back to win Rookie of the Year with Philadelphia the next season.
He followed that by making three straight All-Star teams and finishing in the top four in Defensive Player of the Year voting in both 2020 and 2021. He also landed on the All-Defensive first team in those same two seasons.
The back half of his career has looked very different. Simmons sat out all of 2021/22 while pushing for a trade out of Philadelphia and dealing with a back injury.
He was eventually sent to Brooklyn in the James Harden deal, but the back problems stuck with him there too. After surgeries in May 2022 and March 2024, he played only 90 games for the Nets across two full seasons and two partial ones.
His Brooklyn run ended after the 2025 trade deadline, when the Nets waived him. He finished that season with the Clippers, then didn’t play at all in 2025/26 while stepping away from the court and working to get healthy. More recently, Simmons said he was making his comeback push and looking for another NBA chance, and reporting around that time said he appeared to be injury-free and had regained his athleticism.
At his best, Simmons was one of the league’s more unique players: a 6’10” guard/forward who could run an offense, pressure the ball and fill up a stat sheet. His career numbers - 13.1 points, 7.4 rebounds, 7.2 assists and 1.5 steals per game in 383 regular-season appearances - show just how much he could do when healthy. But his jump shot has always been the catch, and that has made some lineups tricky to build around.
Sacramento still saw enough to move forward. Charania reported that Simmons worked out for general manager Scott Perry and met with him for an hour in late August, then came back to Sacramento this Monday for another workout. During that visit, he met with head coach Doug Christie and other staff members and went through “in-depth” medical examinations.
The Kings have been piecing together their point guard picture all offseason. They used the No. 7 pick in this year’s draft on Darius Acuff Jr., who is expected to be the starter in 2026/27, and the team had been looking for a veteran backup who could help guide the rookie. Among the other free agents linked to Sacramento were Victor Oladipo, Cameron Payne Gabe Vincent, Elfrid Payton, and Russell Westbrook.
If Simmons is joining on a standard contract rather than an Exhibit 9 training camp deal, the Kings will sit about $2.9MM below the luxury tax with 14 players under contract. That would still leave them enough flexibility to add a 15th player without crossing into the tax.
League sources told Sam Amick of The Athletic that the Knicks and Warriors were also among the teams with some level of interest in Simmons.
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