Will Philadelphia 76ers and Delaware 87ers share TLC?

Unlike a divorce settlement of joint custody, the likelihood of both the Philadelphia 76ers and Delaware 87ers sharing in Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot’s progress offers some intriguing upside.

He’s our French Connection. He’s TLC. He’s WaWa, Wahoo, and even “that French guy”. But most of all, he’s a Philadelphia 76er. Who that is is Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot, the 24th pick of the 2016 NBA draft.

The French Touch 🇫🇷👌🏼 pic.twitter.com/19AzvZjJXU
— Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) June 24, 2016

He’s raw, but talented. He’s inexperienced but full of optimism and energy. He’s made a huge jump – traveling to a new continent to play basketball, but so far he’s everything we’d hoped for in a shooting guard who can defend well.

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But where and how he’ll fit on this roster remains to be seen. You see, the team already has returning veterans Nik Stauskas and Hollis Thompson at shooting guard. The team also went out and signed guard Jerryd Bayless and Gerald Henderson to help out at that postion.

Now the team has a fifth player to squeez into what will likely be just three roster slots for the position. Bayless will likely be considered a point guard for roster role distribution, and he will be competing with Sergio Rodriguez and T.J. McConnell for playing time.

But even with that compromise, the team will have four bodies to seat into three chairs. Something will need to give. An early option would be for the team to consider assigning Luwawu to the team’s affiliate D-League team, the Delaware 87ers.

Brown explained in a recent interview with Brian Seltzer:

"“I feel for the first time we are truly going to tap into our D-League program. It certainly makes sense to use the D-League that’s 45 minutes down the road to get him playing, You can do all the drill work you want — it doesn’t equal playing against bodies and feeling other players. I think you’re going to see him in the D-League from time to time, but I also feel like the excitement we saw from the summer league shows that that’s an excellent prospect.” – Brown said of Luwawu-Cabarrot."

Does this mean that Luwawu somehow didn’t cut the mustard in summer league? Not at all. In fact Luwawu-Cabarrot appeared in eight of the club’s nine summer league contests. During this stretch, Luwawu averaged 8.9 points and 3.0 rebounds in 23.5 minutes per game. He shot just under 37.0 percent from the field, and was 10 for 36 from beyond the arc.

The performance was not just about shooting however. Much of Luwawu’s best came on the defensive side of the basketball court, where his constant harassment often derailed his opponent. Perhaps this was best exemplified when he faced the almost-76ers Brandon Ingram in a summer league face-off against the L.A. Lakers. In that game, it was Luwawu who had the better game, scoring ten points on 80 percent shooting from the floor while Ingram was held to seven points on 25 percent shooting.

But while Brandon Ingram has a clear starting role with the Lakers, Luwawu-Cabarrot is buried in the depth chart for now. Until that changes, head coach Brett Brown will manufacture playing minutes for Luwawu, perhaps with the aid of the 87ers.

The best of both worlds? Perhaps. He can practice with the Philadelphia 76ers, learn from the fiercely competitive Gerald Henderson, but play as a member of the 87ers. We discussed the fact that Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot is raw and needs time, this may be the 76ers approach to ensuring that he gets ample playing time. With this type of arrangement, the 76ers could either assign TLC to 87ers outright, or alternate between pro and D-league playing time as he improved over the course of the season.

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This would also serve to delay any decisions to cut a returning veteran at the shooting guard position, which has developed its own “log jam” this off-season.