Philadelphia 76ers: Robert Covington has offered most return on investment

The initial investment of Robert Covington

Covington didn’t start his career with Philly, he got things kicked off in Houston, where he played a grand total of 34 minutes in his first season, with most of his time being spent in the G-League (then the D-League). He was waived by the Rockets in late October leading up to the start of the regular season for his sophomore year.

Covington was then selected in the D-League draft, but then-GM Sam Hinkie saw a chance to buy a possible talent for a very low price with little demand at the pro level for him. Then, signings like this were easy for the Sixers, they were planning on losing games with the intention of building up long-term assets to compete later on tanking.

Covington, in his first two years with the team, was paid a little over $3,000,000, a drop in the bucket compared to the now-$100 million-plus salary cap that exists in the NBA. The investment, as stated, was small.

Even in those early years, he was already paying dividends.

While it was fairly quiet dividends due to the team being downright awful as a whole by design, he shot near 40 percent from beyond the arc in 2014-15 and 2015-16, on around seven attempts per game.

While the issues of streakiness existed in these early years just as much if not more as they do now, there was clearly something brewing here with Cov, and Process faithfuls got to enjoy that for quite a while before the mainstream realized how good he is.

Adam McGee (now at Behind the Buck Pass) wrote a great profile on Covington two years ago at HoopsHabit, and in his research found this out:

For what it’s worth, this still hasn’t happened again, not even by RoCo himself.