{"id":863204,"date":"2026-10-20T00:54:21","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T00:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/863204\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T00:54:21","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T00:54:21","slug":"sacramento-kings-react-after-ben-simmons-tears-his-achilles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/863204\/","title":{"rendered":"Sacramento Kings react after Ben Simmons tears his Achilles"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sacramento Kings are rallying around Ben Simmons after a right Achilles injury ended his season, with players and coaches expressing their support and determination to play for him<\/p>\n

\"Darius<\/a>SACRAMENTO, Calif. \u2014<\/p>\n

Two days before the Sacramento Kings open their NBA season against the Los Angeles Clippers, the team practiced without Ben Simmons, who suffered a right Achilles injury<\/a> that will keep him out for the season.<\/p>\n

Head coach Doug Christie said the team remained in high spirits during practice, motivated to play for Simmons, who was expected to be a key part of their lineup. <\/p>\n

“Obviously gut punch. We all love Ben and we’re going to support Ben,” Christie said. “We consider ourselves a family and we are here to help him through whatever times he’s through, because he’s one of us, and we’ll be together as we go through it.” <\/p>\n

Rookie guard Darius Acuff Jr. expressed several times during the preseason that playing with Simmons was going to help him a lot. <\/p>\n

“We just want to continue this journey for him. You know, he got us with him through everything he goes through. He knows he has a family in us,” Acuff Jr. said. “We were all shocked. We feel bad, especially because he worked his way back to be the best version of himself again and he was. It sucks for something like that to happen.” <\/p>\n

“It definitely don’t supposed to happen that way. With all the work he put in just to come back. And for him not even to make it to the regular season. We just bummed out for him,” Kings guard Malik Monk said. “He was in good spirits when I talked to him. So that’s all you can ask for.” <\/p>\n

Simmons played in only two preseason games against the Golden State Warriors and the San Antonio Spurs. He was in line to start for the Kings during the regular season as well. <\/p>\n

“Ben does so many different things, you don’t fill a role like that. He’s a special, special player. But it’s going to take everybody pulling a little bit more in the same direction to get where we want to go,” Christie said. <\/p>\n

“It changes a lot. He was a big part of our team. He could do everything one through five. So it changes a lot. I think we’ll figure it out for sure. It hurts to lose him, but I think we’ll figure it out,” said Acuff Jr. <\/p>\n

Christie also noted that the team does not yet know when Simmons will undergo surgery. The Kings will travel to Los Angeles Tuesday to face the Clippers in their season opener on Wednesday, October 21. <\/p>\n

See more coverage of top California stories here<\/a> | Download our app<\/a> | Subscribe to our morning newsletter<\/a> | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sacramento Kings are rallying around Ben Simmons after a right Achilles injury ended his season, with players…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":863205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3792],"tags":[8847,7,2643,41665,3215,164,4056,101351,251,135,1267,6,2840,97101,3971,2742,24786,986,477,4055,474,17265,4449,47615],"class_list":["post-863204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento-kings","tag-achilles-injury","tag-basketball","tag-ben-simmons","tag-darius-acuff-jr","tag-doug-christie","tag-golden-state-warriors","tag-kings","tag-kings-lineup","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-clippers","tag-malik-monk","tag-nba","tag-nba-season","tag-oct-21","tag-preseason","tag-regular-season","tag-right-achilles","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-kings","tag-sacramentokings","tag-san-antonio-spurs","tag-season-opener","tag-surgery","tag-team-practice"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117470512027960455","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/863205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}