Carl Landry: His Short, but Fun Time With the Sixers

Carl Landry was only with the Philadelphia 76ers for one season, but his time with the team that won just 10 games was memorable.

Carl Landry was not a player that was brought onto the Philadelphia 76ers to win games. The whole reason Landry ended up on the Sixers was because of a nice trade that helped the Sacramento Kings free up some money, and gave the Sixers Nik Stauskas, a former college sharpshooter that they hoped they could awaken after a rough rookie season.

Just this week, Landry was released by the Philadelphia 76ers to bring their roster down to the legal number that they can bring into training camp later this month.

Landry was an afterthought of the deal between the Kings and Sixers. But by the end of the season, he would be the forefront of the deal, and Stauskas would become more of the afterthought.

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Stauskas had a tough year, despite the hope that he would fill out better in Philadelphia. He ended up being a poor shooter yet again, and it was apparent that he was having issues getting comfortable.

Landry, on the other hand, was ignored for the first portion of the season. Fans, all year, said the Sixers needed a veteran presence. While Elton Brand would become that eventually, Carl Landry was, for some reason, ignored as a veteran.

On top of that, since Landry is a power forward, that made sense, since the first 60 percent of the season or so was experimentation with Jahlil Okafor and Nerlens Noel in the center/power forward slot. Landry started the year off injured, and didn’t play until just before Christmas, which also contributed to him being ignored. But from there through the end of January, he got less than 13 minutes per game.

For the rest of the season, things started to shift in the frontcourt. Brett Brown and the coaching staff realized that Okafor and Noel couldn’t really operate well as power forwards, and started to use players like Landry as the four instead.

From there on out, Landry averaged 10.6 points and 4.6 rebounds in 17.1 minutes per game, shooting 55 percent from the field. His performances in the last leg of the season were highlighted by a 26 point, 8 rebound game. He really started to kick things up in the final leg. In his last 14 games played, he averaged 13.8 points and 5.8 rebounds per game.

These games did not matter. They were games where the Sixers were desperately just trying to stay away from having the worst record of all time. But still, Landry showed out.

Moving forward into this season, it was clear the roadmaps of Landry and the team were not going to line up. Landry is in a contract season, and needs valuable minutes so that he can prove his worth to hopefully get a contract much bigger $6.5 million. With the salary cap continuing to rise, if Landry can get a role playing position on another team, there’s reason to believe he could get closer to $10 million if he performs well.

Landry was not going to get good minutes in Philly. With the Sixers still retaining Jahlil Okafor and Nerlens Noel, they also are bringing in Ben Simmons and Dario Saric, who will get the minutes before Landry.

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It’s tough to see him go. Landry was one of those fun players that ended up on the Sixers over the course of their rough three rebuilding seasons so far. We knew he had to go at some point, but he was still a fun player to watch, even if he was only around for a season.

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Landry, in the grand scheme of things, won’t be remembered as an All-Time great Sixer, or even close to that. But he is one of those players that embodied the different, crazy plan that Sam Hinkie put in place. Landry will hopefully be able to find a team that can offer him better playing time and a better system to perform well.