Philadelphia 76ers: Give the Blue Coats guys some run

In the NBA, first-round picks are king.

Most seriously successful teams are built around at least one top-3 player, and some of the really elite units have two or even three players picked near the top of their respective drafts.

With that being said, there are plenty of second-round selectees, G-League standouts, European standouts, and undrafted free agents who get to the NBA the hard way and parlay their sweat equity into a long and fruitful career.

Need proof? Look no further than current Philadelphia 76ers contributors Shake Milton, Danny Green, and Seth Curry, all of whom weren’t drafted within the first 30 picks on the NBA Draft, and in Curry’s case, wasn’t drafted at all.

While only time will tell if the Sixers can develop for themselves the next Milton, Green, or Curry, they have a really good opportunity to do just that with a trio of young Blue Coatsmen who are officially back in Philly for the remainder of the season in Isaiah Joe, Rayjon Tucker, and “BBall” Paul Reed, all of whom are ready to translate their G-League success into the NBA… if given a chance to actually play.

The Philadelphia 76ers owe it to themselves to keep Joe, Tucker, and Reed active moving forward.

More from Section 215

When the Philadelphia 76ers took the court against the San Antonio Spurs, they did so with 13 active players – Tobias Harris, Danny Green, Tony Bradley, Ben Simmons, Seth Curry, Mike Scott, Terrance Ferguson, Dwight Howard, Tyrese Maxey, Matisse Thybulle, Furkan Korkmaz, Isaiah Joe, and Paul Reed.

In the colloquial sense of the term, the game was a certified bench-clearer. Quite literally, every player on the Sixers’ active roster got to see the court for at least six minutes of action, and all 15 of them took at least one shot, even Ferguson, who has only thrown up seven shots with one make in roughly 46.5 minutes of action.

Why is this relevant? Well, because Ferguson – and Poirier for that matter – is realistically only on the Sixers’ roster for one reason: Cap considerations.

That’s right, while some questioned Daryl Morey‘s decision to include Ferguson and Porier as part of the Danny Green-Al Horford trade, the deal made sense from the Sixers’ standpoint. Morey wanted them to effectively chill on the bench, potentially earn a role in camp if at all possible, but likely bide their time before being included in a package later in the season for a more expensive player.

Could Porier have beat out Tony Bradley to become the Sixers’ third-string center? Sure. At the time, Bradley wasn’t even a member of the team when Morey pulled off the trade, so it’s entirely possible Morey watched the former Celtic’s tape and liked what he saw. The same could be said for Furgeson, who played a Justin Anderson-esque role with the OKC Thunder over the past three years before becoming an afterthought in a post-Thybulle world.

So, with neither Poirier nor Furgeson having any real chance to make the Sixers’ rotation, let alone develop into long-term contributors in the final year of their respective deals, *clap* why *clap* are *clap* they *clap* playing *clap* over Joe, Reed, and Rayjon Tucker?

Now sure, Joe, Reed, and Tucker have only been back with the Sixers for a matter of day following their fantastic run with the Blue Coats down in Orlando and could conceivably earn bigger roles with the team moving forward, but if you notice, Reed and Joe were the last two players to be called into the game and as for Tucker? Well, he wasn’t even dressed for the game and thus wasn’t afforded a chance to get his half a dozen minutes of action.

With roughly 30-ish games left to play, the Sixers are in sort of a weird position. On one hand, they need to keep winning games to stay in first place and fend off a bout versus the Brooklyn Nets for as long as possible. The team also needs to settle on a viable rotation, incorporate any new players acquired over the next month into said rotation, and find a way to keep their top-line starters healthy and fresh before the playoffs roll around.

The Blue Coats three probably aren’t going to break into the playoff rotation anytime soon – especially since Tyrese Maxey can barely find minutes in a typical game – but they should have plenty of opportunities to see the field both together or as individual sub-ins to help keep minutes down and morale at an all-time high.

Shams Charania has already indicated that the Sixers plan on elevating Paul from his current two-way contract to a full-on NBA deal at some point down the line – presumably when the team has a free roster spot following a trade – so it’s not like the team plans on icing out their young trio of G-leaguers until things open back up in Delaware this fall.

With the restriction on how many days a two-way contract player can spend in the NBA officially lifted for the 2020-21 season, there’s no reason Joe, Reed, or Tucker should be inactive for any game moving forward, even when Embiid is fully healthy. The Sixers have been front-runners in every game they’ve appeared in since the All-Star break and have been able to give their deep bench guys some additional play in each contest as a result. While that won’t happen every game, especially when the Sixers take their forthcoming road trip out west, keeping a dynamic young combo guard, a 3 point shooter with limitless range and a versatile stretch-four/five with a thriving PS5 side hustle should conceivably give Doc Rivers any sort of sub he would like regardless of the situation.

A few minutes here and there could pay massive dividends down the road for a top-loaded roster with only eight players under contract next season and a low-key need for developmental talent.

The beauty of Isaiah Joe, Rayjon Tucker, and “BBall” Paul Reed isn’t that they are highly touted prospects or elite players in waiting. Virtually no one had any of them pegged as first-round picks in their respective NBA Drafts, and rightfully so due to the incomplete natures of their respective games. But if the Philadelphia 76ers can get something out of these players making less combined than Terrance Ferguson in 2021, it’ll be a nice development that could pay dividends moving forward.