When the Philadlephia 76ers drafted yet another big man in the 2016 NBA Draft there were undoubtedly a few groans here and there, but for the most part people were excited about Ben Simmons. He's a 6'10", 240-pound point forward and is already being compared to LeBron James —- and maybe rightfully so.
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While Simmons has yet to play any sort of meaningful game in the NBA, there are plenty of people boarding the hype train as he already has a top-10 selling jersey right now.
From Philly.com:
Since draft night, Fanatics.com is reporting that in terms of merchandise sales, Simmons is the 10th-best seller among National Basketball Association players. He's the highest-selling Philadelphia athlete in all sports across the Fanatics platform of hundreds of e-commerce sites, which includes SixersShop.com - the Sixers' official team store.
...
Fanatics.com ranked the top 10 NBA player sales from June 23 to Aug. 31. In this order, they were: LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, Derrick Rose, Dwyane Wade, Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, Russell Westbrook, and Simmons
That's some pretty incredible company to be in before you even play an NBA game. If we were to break down the stats even more I'm willing to bet a ton of sales are coming from Australia where Simmons was born. Now if only jersey sales translated into wins...
[h/t CBSSports.com]
