September 03, 2024
Mike Watters/USA TODAY Sports
Can former Sixers second-round pick Charles Bassey regain his footing with the San Antonio Spurs?
In another edition of Sixers Ties, let's travel to the Western Conference's Southwest Division, which only has two active players who have ever suited up in Philadelphia. But it has plenty more folks with connections to the team. Let's dive in:
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Both players rostered by a team in this division are on the Spurs, and neither one is exactly number retirement material.
The Sixers selected Charles Bassey at No. 53 overall in the 2021 NBA Draft, and he averaged 7.3 minutes per game across 23 contests as a rookie. But before the start of Bassey's sophomore campaign, he was waived by the Sixers. The team had signed veteran center Montrezl Harrell, and deemed the combination of Harrell and Paul Reed to be sufficient behind Joel Embiid.
Bassey signed with the Spurs on a two-way contract days later, and within a few months had earned a conversion to a standard NBA deal. He looked like a developing rotation center for San Antonio as they reached the height of their rebuild, but a torn ACL derailed his momentum. Bassey is returning to San Antonio in 2024-25, looking to reestablish his status as a potential keeper. With phenom Victor Wembanyama solidified as the Spurs' center for the next decade-plus, Bassey has a chance to become the regular backup for a future MVP contender.
Julian Champagnie, meanwhile, got his NBA start with the Sixers when he signed a two-way deal with the team before the 2022-23 season. His run in Philadelphia lasted for... two regular season games. He was waived, and like Bassey, landed in San Antonio. Champagnie has turned himself into a viable rotation wing, starting 59 games for the Spurs last season. As the team ramps up its efforts to compete in 2024-25, it will be interesting to see if Champagnie is capable of maintaining a noteworthy role in the rotation.
The Rockets have two members of their coaching staff who have spent time in Philadelphia. The first is controversial head coach Ime Udoka, who is entering his second season in Houston after being exiled from the Boston Celtics amid a scandal regarding an alleged affair in the workplace. Udoka spent one season in Philadelphia, serving as Brett Brown's lead assistant during the 2019-20 campaign. While that team did not enjoy any sort of real success and was blown up the following offseason — and Udoka departed following Brown's firing to take a similar role with the Brooklyn Nets — Udoka did develop a strong relationship with Embiid.
Rockets head coach Ime Udoka called Joel Embiid one of the players he is closest to in the NBA. Spoke at length about Embiid’s maturity and said he went to his wedding in the summer.
— Adam Aaronson (@SixersAdam) January 15, 2024
If you watched men's basketball contests during the 2024 Olympics, you likely remember the heartwarming underdog story of South Sudan, whose team drew worldwide praise for its tenacity and dedication. The team was coached by Rockets assistant Royal Ivey, a retired 10-year NBA veteran who had two different stints with the Sixers. Ivey is becoming an intriguing name in coaching circles.
Before Dereck Lively II was drafted by the Dallas Mavericks and became a featured member of their rotation en route to an NBA Finals appearance as a rookie, he was a Philly kid with one hell of a connection to his hometown team— Lively's late mother worked for Sixers from 1993 to 2006. Just months before he was drafted by Dallas, Lively actually attended a Sixers home playoff game as a fan. Lively is on a remarkable trajectory already, and he figures to be a lynchpin of many future Mavericks teams.
When the Sixers agreed to sign-and-trade Buddy Hield to the Golden State Warriors, they entered the first six-team trade in league history. The primary objective of the deal was to send Warriors icon Klay Thompson to Dallas. As their reward for sending Hield to the Warriors, they received the Mavericks' 2031 second-round pick.
Memphis acquired the No. 53 overall pick in June's 2024 NBA Draft from the Detroit Pistons to select UConn sharpshooter Cam Spencer, who they later inked to a two-way contract. But that selection had already been passed around a few times before it ended up belonging to Memphis.
The draft choice initially belonged to the New York Knicks, who traded it to Charlotte in a deal that took place during the 2022 NBA Draft. But Charlotte rerouted the pick to the Sixers in a three-team trade also including the Portland Trail Blazers, sending Matisse Thybulle to Portland and Jalen McDaniels to Philadelphia.
Looking to shed what they believed was dead weight at last year's trade deadline, the Sixers sent this pick to Detroit as compensation for the Pistons taking on the remaining money owed to Danuel House Jr., who had fallen out of favor in Philadelphia and was not going to see rotation minutes moving forward.
After then-Sixers General Manager Bryan Colangelo became engulfed in an unforgettable scandal that led to him and the team parting ways at the beginning of the 2018 offseason, the Sixers embarked on a slow search to find a new person to head their basketball operations. But all along, it was clear that the team's ownership was happy with the core front office members in place — Alex Rucker, Marc Eversley, Ned Cohen, Elton Brand chief among them — and was not going to hire a lead shot-caller who would want to bring their own people into place.
According to reports at the time, the Sixers interviewed David Griffin, who was in charge of the 2015-16 Cleveland Cavaliers team that stunned the 73-9 Warriors in the NBA Finals and helped serve as a middleman between LeBron James and team owner Dan Gilbert. The team appeared turned off by Griffin seemingly desiring to hire his own staff — a more than reasonable wish for a championship-winning executive, surely.
The Sixers ended up promoting Brand to General Manager but hammering home that they were using a "collaborative" process, and soon after, Griffin would land a job leading the New Orleans Pelicans soon after they won a draft lottery that netted them Zion Williamson.
While hiring Griffin back in 2018 would have prevented some extremely difficult moments from the Brand-led front office, had the Sixers made that move they would have likely never had the chance to hire Daryl Morey as their President of Basketball Operations when Morey departed Houston. In retrospect, this was a significant moment for the organization.
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