First the Sixers, now the Nets: Ben Simmons’ career is wasting away. No one cares.

There is nothing sad anymore about the decline of Ben Simmons’ NBA career.

Sadness requires sympathy. It requires a feeling, however slight, of affection or understanding for a person dealing with hardships and difficult circumstances. Whatever affection or understanding anyone outside of Simmons’ family and his most devoted acolytes might have had for him dried up a long time ago, or should have.

The Brooklyn Nets announced Thursday morning that Simmons would miss the rest of the season with what they described as a nerve impingement in his lower back. And if, throughout his four full seasons playing for the 76ers and the 57 games he has played for the Nets, Simmons had displayed even a modicum of humility or self-awareness or commitment to improving the weaknesses in his game, there would be a groundswell of support for him. He’d be a tragic figure. His talent and potential were obvious: the remarkable speed for a player who was 6-foot-10, the passing ability, the vision, the instincts on defense.

Just last week at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston, Sixers president Daryl Morey said Simmons was “the best defensive perimeter player I’ve ever had on a team.” No one would want to see those skills go unused and that promise go unfulfilled. All Simmons had to do was make a good-faith effort to prove that he wanted to play, and everyone would be pulling for him, and it’s telling now that apparently no one can be bothered to care one way or another.

From his fear of shooting the ball from beyond five feet to the garish look-at-me fashion he flashed while sitting on the bench, from his refusal to play for the Sixers in 2021 to his exploitation of the country’s mental-health crisis to the regression in his game since arriving in Brooklyn, Simmons has become the consummate case study for any amateur psychologist trying to project how a prodigy will fare in the NBA.

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Can he handle the pressure? Will he put in the time and work to get better? Will he recognize that these franchises and their paying customers aren’t there just to celebrate him and his inherent wonderfulness? We know the answers to those questions now, and we can see the results. He’s had one problem with his back after another since joining the Nets — a herniated disc, inflammation, an epidural for treatment — but he has sacrificed so much credibility that even a legitimate injury just gets people rolling their eyes at him again. Just more B.S. from B.S. He’s The Ben Who Cried Wolf.

Maybe Simmons was always bound to be a lost cause. Maybe he was never going to listen to anyone telling him something he didn’t want to hear. But it’s hard to shake the notion that Simmons grew up in a cocoon of coddled privilege and that neither he nor those closest to him would allow anyone to pierce it.

In retrospect, the most revealing moment of his time with the Sixers wasn’t the wide-open dunk he passed up in Game 7 against the Hawks or any of the hundreds of naked jump shots he was too scared to take. It was a conversation with his father, Dave, before Game 6 of the 2019 Eastern Conference semifinals against the Raptors.

That night marked one of the few times, arguably the last time, that Simmons had an outstanding performance in a significant postseason game. He had 21 points, eight rebounds, and six assists as the Sixers won to set up Game 7, and his dad spent several minutes standing courtside at the Wells Fargo Center, comparing him favorably to Kawhi Leonard and Jimmy Butler, wondering why anyone would doubt that Ben was bound for greatness.

“He’s 22,” Dave Simmons said that night. “I’m always looking at other guys at the same age. Look at Kawhi at 22.”

OK, look at Kawhi Leonard, who, at 22, was the MVP of the 2014 NBA Finals.

“Jimmy Butler, 22, averaging 2.9 points or whatever.”

Jimmy Butler: from a broken home to junior college in Tyler, Texas, to Marquette — as self-made a star as there is or has been in the league.

“None of these were where Ben Simmons is,” Dave said. “So I’m very proud of where he is at the same age, and I also love the fact that everyone expects so much more of him. In some ways, it’s a great honor, but it’s a lot of pressure, too. But that’s OK. I think Ben can handle it.”

Ben could not handle it. Not here. Not in Brooklyn. And whenever he ends up next, it’ll be more of the same. He’s 27. Look at Ben Simmons at 27. What a waste.