Philadelphia 76ers: Is Jonah Bolden coming to America?

With the 2017-2018 NBA season now over, the Philadelphia 76ers may be getting early reinforcements in the form of stashed forward Jonah Bolden.

Even though the NBA season is still technically going on, it appears as though the Philadelphia 76ers have already started planning out their 2018-2019 roster and may be looking to add a little more International flavor to their lineup.

After spending all of 2017 in Europe playing for Maccabi Tel Aviv, Jonah Bolden, the former UCLA Bruin by way of Melbourne, Victoria appears to be on his way back stateside for his rookie season in the NBA, at least according to his Twitter account.

Though he’s far from a household name, Bolden, the 36th overall pick in the 2017 NBA Draft, did play for the Sixers in both the Utah and Las Vegas Summer Leagues last year and made his fair share of plays at both ends of the court in a little over 23 minutes of action a night.

In only eight game with the team, Boldin averaged 8.75 points, 6.25 rebounds and an impressive 1.4 blocks per game, and turn plenty of heads as a second-round pick playing alongside a then-healthy Markelle Fultz.

Sure, it was a fairly limited sample size against plenty of players who didn’t make NBA rosters, but Boldin’s performances went so far as to have some people call him the steal of the second round, while others listing him as a top-30 talent hidden in the second round.

With only 11 players currently under contract going into 2018, and the Sixers backup power forward, Ersan Ilyasova, set to become an unrestricted free agent, Bolden presents the team with a cheap, high upside stretch forward who can play strong interior defense, and make shots from the perimeter.

Even though the 76ers currently have arguably three of the best under-25 frontcourt players in the entire NBA in Joel Embiid, Dario Saric, and Ben Simmons, they only have one other big man, Richaun Holmes, under contract moving forward, and will certainly need to sure that position up if they are to have any hopes of taking the Process past the second round of the 2019 NBA Playoffs.

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While he’s yet to play a single game in the NBA, Jonah Bolden has the size, skill set and upside to be a perfect fit on Brett Brown‘s roster moving forward, and could fill a similar role to that of Dario Saric when he came to the Philadelphia 76ers from Europe in 2016.