Philadelphia 76ers: Signing Elton Brand Both Helps and Hurts

The Philadelphia 76ers re-signed Elton Brand to a one-year deal, something that will both help them and hurt them going into training camp.

The Philadelphia 76ers reportedly re-signed veteran forward Elton Brand to a one-year contract on Wednesday afternoon. Brand joined the team partway through the 2015-16 season to serve as an experienced veteran voice to the youthful team.

Brand joined the team that he played with earlier in his lengthy career last season, and didn’t see minutes at first. Once he adjusted to the game, and got back in the swing of things, he was actually quite effective for them in some games.

Still, with Brand aging more every day, and the team seemingly moving away from the loss-heavy seasons that we’ve seen in the past three years, it made sense for the team and Brand to part ways this offseason. Brand, who was a free agent on July 1st, was not a headline during the intense weeks of free agency. Still, no teams in the NBA really seemed to interested in him even these past few days.

More from The Sixer Sense

The Sixers, however, were clearly intrigued by Brand, as shown by them signing him to the deal.

This deal works out well for them in plenty of ways, but in other ways, it can hurt them moving forward. Clearly, Bryan Colangelo looked at these components and decided that the positives outweighed the negatives.

The positives are pretty obvious. The Sixers still have a ton of young players (they debut four rookie players this season alone) that need some serious guidance if they’re going to have good careers. Brand is a player who is entering his 18th season in the NBA, and therefore, has a ton of experience under his belt. With that experience comes knowledge that he can feed along to they younger players to ensure they’re primed to compete in the first year, as well as later years of their careers.

Secondly, Brand isn’t completely useless on the court yet. Although he definitely is one of the oldest players on the team, and definitely is one of the players who are almost certainly subject to sore joints, he’s still solid, and can still have a few solid nights if you have some players that are injured and you need him to step up.

Will Brand play very many games? Probably not. If he does, he’s almost certainly not going to have an integral role in those games. But when he does get some of those valuable minutes, he will step up, and the reasons you’re signing him is for off-court reasons anyway.

On the flip side, signing Brand does bring up some road blocks that will have to be addressed in just a few weeks, during training camp. Brand doesn’t put the team above any roster limitations — the team can bring 20 players into training camp, and they must slim down to 15 for the preseason — but he does make the final roster decisions a bit difficult.

Before Brand, it seemed fairly obvious who was going to make the team and who wasn’t. There were some players who are obviously on the bubble that were on the team last season (T.J. McConnell and Nik Stauskas immediately come to mind) but for the most part, we had a solid idea of who was going to make the team.

The team signing Brand seems to indicate that things are very much more up in the air than we originally thought as far as the final roster. Adding Brand into the mix indicates that the team is dedicating one of their fifteen spots to him.

With that in mind, it’s almost certain that either Nik Stauskas or T.J. McConnell is not with the team next season. There simply isn’t room to have both of them, Brand, and the players before them in the depth chart. It’s almost more likely that the team takes a gamble on someone like Anthony “Cat” Barber instead of Stauskas, just because of how poorly he has performed.

must read: Top 30 Most Memorable Moments of All Time

Really, there’s not too much negative regarding the Brand re-signing. The only negative thing it brings up is making it harder to make some final roster decisions. In a way, however, it may make it easier to justify cutting a player such as Stauskas or McConnell.

Next: EB Fills the Carl Landry Void

The move is certainly a good one, and deserves a good grade. It certainly ranks highly amongst the offseason moves this year.

Signing Elton Brand Helps and Hurts the Philadelphia 76ers

By Josh Wilson | Sep 8, 2016

The Philadelphia 76ers re-signed Elton Brand to a one-year deal, something that will both help them and hurt them going into training camp.

More from The Sixer Sense