At last, the Philadelphia 76ers are starting to get a lot healthier than they have been over the last couple of years. For a team well-known for having a slew of injury-prone players, that is a very welcome sight. However, that has necessarily pushed some guys further down the drain in the rotation, most prominent of which is Justin Edwards.
The sophomore forward has not seen as much action as he did last season. While that is to be expected, the 76ers have doubled down on his shaky footing in the rotation, having sent him to the G-League almost on a nightly basis with the coaching staff playing a slew of wings and forwards over him.
To be fair, Edwards has not really done much to compel the 76ers to rethink their current stance. His struggles this season have been well-documented, and he has not had a solid stretch of basketball for months now. As such, the team is latently sending him a strong message he cannot ignore, and what it entails could hint at a grim future for him with the franchise.
The 76ers clearly do not trust Justin Edwards as much as people expected them to
In his 29 appearances so far this season, Edwards has turned in 5.1 points and 1.7 rebounds in 15.6 minutes per outing, having drained just 36.4 percent of his field goal attemps and 33 percent of his three-point tries. It is quite obvious that those figures will not net him the serving of court time he so desires.
Edwards had totaled just over nine minutes in the last five games, racking up three DNPs along the way. The coaching staff is slowly phasing him out of the rotation, and the return of both Kelly Oubre Jr. and Trendon Watford will only make it a lot tougher for him to get back into the loop on a nightly basis.
With the G-League, Edwards can hone his skills as a three-and-D forward and expand his game to bring to the surface the traits he was profiled to possess. So far, those have not manifested with the 76ers this season despite solid flashes during his rookie campaign.
All hope is not lost with Edwards, but time is definitely not on his side. The 76ers are starting to move much more deliberately when it comes to game management decisions, and for now, the sophomore is simply not an indispensable piece of the puzzle.