PHILADELPHIA — The long local nightmare is over. James Harden has arrived. Ben Simmons has left. And if you’ve paid any attention to social media and the currents and eddies of public discussion about the 76ers-Nets trade that shook the NBA last week, you know that, once more, a Philadelphia-related story of national interest has followed a familiar pattern. It has devolved, thanks to Simmons’ claims that he suffered from mental-health issues, into a cliched and tiresome debate over whether fans here create a particularly toxic environment for athletes and coaches.
The debate is tiresome for a lot of reasons, the biggest of which is that, once the rhetorical flourishes start flying, you know a lazy Santa Claus reference isn’t far off. But mostly it’s tiresome because it gets so polarized so quickly. Either Philadelphia is an emotional hellfire from which only the toughest athletes emerge without psychosomatic trauma, or Simmons is the wimpiest wimp who ever wimped out of anything, and any suggestion otherwise besmirches a great and devoted fan base guilty only of holding those with the greatest of expectations to the highest of standards. The truth, naturally, is somewhere between those two poles.
Is Philadelphia a tough place to play?
