Philadelphia 76ers: Can Michael Foster Jr. make the 15 man roster?

After trading away their best chance to secure the services of the sort of big wing/combo forward fans have been craving for years now in a player-for-player-plus-pick deal with the Memphis Grizzlies centered around pick 23, Danny Green, and De’Anthony Melton, it felt the draft had come and gone with the Philadelphia 76ers‘ biggest need was very much remaining unmet.

Had the team bought back into the second round, maybe this would have been different. Maybe the team would have been able to secure the services of a player like E.J. Liddell who dropped about 20 picks lower than almost every mock draft projected, and we’d collectively be looking at the event through a much different lens.

But then, Daryl Morey pulled not one but two very large rabbits out of his hat and signed up a pair of 6-foot-8/6-foot-9 frontcourt players to his roster via a free agent contract and a two-way deal.

Could the two newest members of the Philadelphia 76ers, Julian Champagnie and Michael Foster Jr., both make the roster? Theoretically yes, the team has 13 players under contract with the addition of Melton and could retain the duo with no issue, but will they? For Champagnie, the answer to that question is almost certainly yes, as he is on a two-way contract alongside Charlie Brown Jr., and is the exact kind of big wing Philly has been missing for years now. But Foster Jr. isn’t the second coming of Robert Covington or Dario Saric; no, he’s a 6-foot-9 small ball center with G-League experience but a less than ideal path to the 15-man roster.

Michael Foster Jr.’s versatility will decide his fate with the Philadelphia 76ers.

Michael Foster Jr. joined the G-League Ignite as a very highly touted prospect. A 5-star recruit out of Milwaukee who initially committed to play at James Harden’s alma mater, Arizona State, Foster Jr. opted to instead go quasi-professional instead of spending a season in Scottsdale and was largely awarded for his effort with a steady role with the Ignite as the team’s starting center.

Starting all 13 of the games he appeared in, Foster Jr. averaged 29.8 minutes per game as the Ignition’s starting center, where he averaged 14.8 points, 8.8 rebounds, and 1.9 blocks as the team’s premier post presence. Though he wasn’t a particularly efficient shooter, hitting just 48.7 percent of his attempts from the field and 31.3 percent of his shots from 3 on only 1.2 attempts per game, he hit 75 percent of his attempts from the free-throw line and generally had a good looking stroke for a 6-foot-9 post player.

These efforts, when coupled with his high school pedigree, led Foster to be the 49th ranked prospect on ESPN’s big-board coming into the 2022 NBA Draft, which, if my math is correct, is a draftable grade. He ranked 12th among power forwards, which would likely need to be his position at the NBA level, and even if his game had some holes in it from both a technical and athletic standpoint, few expected to see the G League performer still on the board when all 58 picks had been accounted for.

And yet, that’s what happened and for one reason or another, be it a lack of interest in a two-way contract or a burning desire to make a 15-man roster as a rookie, Foster will now enter the Sixers’ building as a fully contracted player, albeit one who is almost certainly not on a guaranteed contract.

Theoretically, that decision might not have been the worst one for Foster. The Sixers have spots open on their roster and have shown a serious willingness to keep an excessive number of reserve big men in order to have ample Joel Embiid insurance should he go down, but with Charles Bassey and Paul Reed already in place and Daryl Morey already suggesting that he could sign another veteran center on a minimum deal, one has to wonder how Foster fits into the fold. If he can fill a role like Villanova great Eric Paschall‘s in Golden State, basically a small-ball five who can also play the four, then hey, maybe Foster can have a spot on the roster yet and play alongside everyone from Reed to Bassey and even Embiid but if not, it’ll be hard to break through the clutter and stick around, as his talents largely overlap with the players already on the roster.

Will Michael Foster Jr. overcome his circumstances and find a long-term home in the City of Brotherly Love? Or will his one-way contract prove to be his downfall and ultimately have to look for a home elsewhere due to the team’s frontcourt logjam? Either way, the Philadelphia 76ers have a new member of their roster who is two years removed from being a five-star high school recruit; now it’s their job to find out of they can use him.