Former Philadelphia 76ers star Andre Iguodala recalls his growth with the franchise in his final visit to his original NBA home.
PHILADELPHIA–Andre Iguodala paid his final visit to the Wells Fargo Center on Friday as a member of the Golden State Warriors as he plays out the final season of a very successful 19-year NBA career. Iguodala has yet to make his season debut in 2022-23 due to a hip injury.
The 38-year-old out of Arizona was the 9th pick of the 2004 NBA draft by the Philadelphia 76ers and he spent the first eight seasons of his career with the franchise. It could be split up into two parts between his time with Allen Iverson and his time after Iverson was traded.
When Iverson was still with the franchise, Iguodala was a kid learning the ropes of the game, but once The Answer was traded, that was when he had to grow up and take steps forward.
Iguodala discussed his time and his growth with the Sixers on Friday:
Here is a list of the 22 players who have worn the No. 20 uniform of the Philadelphia 76ers in the franchise’s history.
It’s summertime in the NBA, so it’s time to learn some history. The Philadelphia 76ers are one of the older franchises in the NBA. Their history dates to the 1949-50 season.
With that longevity, the team has had hundreds of players come through the City of Brotherly Love. Sixers Wire looks at the No. 20 which has been worn by 22 of those players in the history of the franchise.
Jodie Meeks says he’s open to returning to the Purple and Gold.
Several years ago, shooting guard Jodie Meeks had a successful two-year stint with the Los Angeles Lakers.
During the 2012-13 and 2013-14 seasons, he was one of the team’s top 3-point marksmen. In 2014, he had a career season, averaging 15.7 points per game while hitting 40.1% of his 3s.
After winning an NBA championship with the Toronto Raptors in 2019, Meeks spent a couple of months this season with Raptors 905, Toronto’s G League team.
Wenzell Ortiz of Sideline Sources did an exclusive interview with him and asked if he would be open to coming back to the Lakers.
“Most definitely,” Meeks responded. “I really enjoyed my two years with the Lakers, so reuniting would be something that I’d be more than happy to do. Aside from being a great locker room presence, I can clearly add shooting, and I’m also a hard-nosed defender. I can come in and give that extra effort off the bench that everybody saw they needed last season. Every team can use a shooter that can make shots for their superstars.”
Three-point shooting has been a relative weakness for L.A. over the past couple of seasons, and even, to a certain extent, during the championship season in 2020.
Shooters such as Meeks, especially those who can also defend and get up and down the court, would go a long way in helping the Lakers recover from this disastrous season.
However, Meeks will be 35 next season. Age is already a big problem for the Lakers, who had several players in their mid- or late-30s.
The NBA will allow teams to sign a replacement player if there’s an injury, a positive COVID-19 test or a player who chooses to sit out.
As the NBA prepares to resume the 2019-20 season in July, more details about the league’s plan are coming to light. In the event of an injury or a positive COVID-19 test during training camp or the regular season, teams will be able to sign replacement players from the free-agent pool.
The NBA will allow each team to bring 17 players (including their two-way guys) to Disney’s Wide World of Sports. There won’t be a limit on how many replacement players a team can sign, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. Once the playoffs start on August 17, teams won’t be able to add any replacement players.
Every night, players will be tested for COVID-19; if a player tests positive, they must self-quarantine for 10-14 days while their team continues playing.
Not only will replacement players be necessary in the event of positive tests, they also could be called upon if a player is injured. Most teams will arrive in Orlando healthier than usual at this point in the season thanks to the four-month break, but a number of trainers and players have expressed concern that there could be more injuries than usual when the season resumes. After all, players have been working out on their own since mid-March and it’s hard to mimic game movements and intensity while training alone. Ramping back up slowly with a training camp (and potentially two or three exhibition games) should help, but there’s still increased injury risk.
Because this is an unprecedented situation, people around the NBA have no idea how teams will approach this transaction window and how many replacement players will be signed.
“I’m not sure if teams will rush to sign guys,” an agent said. “NBA rosters are already the biggest of any major sport in terms of the ratio of players on the roster to players on the court/field,” the agent explained. “In the NBA, it’s 15:5 (or 3:1) whereas it’s 25:9 (or 2.8:1) in MLB and 53:22 (or 2.4:1) in the NFL. And that doesn’t even include two-way players. I’m sure every team is aware of all the available G League guys and free agents. But in the playoffs, most rotations shrink to nine or 10 guys anyway. So, if you have 15 players, you should have five extra guys.”
“I’m curious to see if teams will sign free agents,” one Western Conference executive added. “I have no idea what will happen. At the end of the day, we’re just talking about a 15th man most likely, right?”
One Eastern Conference general manager pointed out that some teams may not consider signing replacement players at all, even if there is an injury or a positive COVID-19 test. Since a replacement player would have to quarantine for 10-14 days before playing, the team’s injured or sick player may be close to returning by the time the replacement player is finally able to take the court.
“I think as long as a team doesn’t have multiple players who get sick at the same time, they won’t sign anyone,” the general manager said. “I think most teams will just wait for their sick player to return.”
Some NBA teams with an open roster spot may decide to sign a free agent prior to arriving in Orlando rather than waiting until an injury or positive test occurs to address their depth. Technically, this player wouldn’t be a “replacement player,” but he’d be stashed on their roster in case of emergency. This would allow the player to go through training camp with the team as well as the initial quarantine period in Orlando. Then, if there is an injury or positive test, he would be able to play right away rather than having to quarantine for 10-14 days upon arrival like a replacement player would have to do.
Recently, there’s been a lot of discussion about how some players may choose not to play when the season resumes in Orlando. In recent weeks, a number of executives brought up this possibility and openly wondered what would happen if their players sit out because they didn’t want to be in the bubble for months and risk their health. Now, some players are also concerned that resuming play would shift the public’s focus away from the Black Lives Matter movement.
While it’s possible that enough NBA players speaking up would force the NBPA to back out of the plan to resume play, it seems more likely that the NBA will just allow each player to make their own decision when it comes to participating. If a player chooses to sit out, their team will resume play without them. These players wouldn’t face any consequences (aside from not being paid) and NBA teams would be allowed to sign a replacement player to take their place, according to a recent article by Wojnarowski.
There’s also some concern that players on fringe playoff teams will opt to play, but then want to leave the bubble or sit out as soon as their team is mathematically eliminated from the postseason. Players won’t want to put their health at risk and stay in the bubble if they aren’t playing for something. Some players (such as Damian Lillard) have already said that they wouldn’t risk their health to participate in meaningless games, and who could blame them?
“I feel like the eighth seed and the ninth seed could partially be determined by whose schedule sets them up against teams who are ‘tanking’ at the end,” said one Western Conference executive.
DeMarcus Cousins is one of the free agents who’s eligible to be signed. (Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports)
Interestingly, not all free agents are eligible to be signed as replacement players.
In order to be eligible, a player had to be on an NBA or G League roster this season or last season. Players who were overseas as of March 11, 2020 (when the NBA season was suspended) are not eligible to be signed, which rules out some notable free agents such as Lance Stephenson, Donatas Motiejunas, Greg Monroe and Miles Plumlee. If a player started the season overseas but got a FIBA clearance before March 11, they are eligible to be signed as long as they were on an NBA or G League roster in 2019-20 or 2018-19 (like Willie Reed, for example, who was in Greece to start the season but then got his FIBA clearance and signed with a G League team).
There are plenty of of notable free agents and former G League players who are eligible to be signed including DeMarcus Cousins, Isaiah Thomas, Darren Collison, Jamal Crawford, Iman Shumpert, JR Smith, Nik Stauskas, Kenneth Faried, Tyler Zeller, Jerian Grant, Corey Brewer, Tyler Johnson, Jodie Meeks, Michael Beasley, Nick Young, Trey Burke, Allen Crabbe, Jordan Bell, Justin Anderson, Tim Frazier, Tyrone Wallace, Ivan Rabb, Jarrod Uthoff, Amile Jefferson, Jonah Bolden, Tyler Ennis, Josh Magette, JP Macura, Ryan Broekhoff and Yante Maten among others.
While it’ll be interesting to see how the 22 NBA teams in the bubble utilize the replacement players, the eight teams who aren’t resuming play will be allowed to sign players during this transaction window too. Don’t be surprised if some of these teams take advantage of this opportunity to add a free agent and acquire their Bird rights.
“I would be on the lookout for a smart non-bubble team to add someone during the transaction window,” one NBA agent said. “Any team can sign guys from that same pool of talent and, I assume, pay guys the same pro-rated amount.”
In Wojnarowski’s article about replacement players, he confirmed that “the eight teams left out of the Orlando resumption are allowed to waive or sign players during the transaction window,” although “they cannot sign a player to a two-way contract.”
It’s worth noting that a lot of these details are still being worked out and nothing is official as of yet. Several agents and executives pointed out that they’re receiving these updates through social media, just like the rest of us, and awaiting further instruction from the league or NBPA.
If a player gets hurt or catches coronavirus once teams are in Orlando, the pool of players to replace them will be limited, and these are the best shooters available.
The Boston Celtics and 21 other teams finishing the 2019-20 NBA season in at Disney’s ESPN Wide World of Sports complex in Lake Buena Vista, Florida will need to tap into a limited pool of players if anyone ends up getting injured — or worse, comes down with the coronavirus behind the pandemic.
Teams will be limited to players who have signed with an NBA or G League team this season or last, and any team who decides to go this route will have to keep the player they are replacing out for the rest of the season.
So, with a very deep roster with every slot occupied by a player as good as most of the options they’d be replaced by, the chances of the Celtics dipping their toe in this particular pool is slim, but real.
Should the need arise, it’s possible the position they play and skillset they possess will dictate what the Celtics will be looking for in a replacement.
But, if a player who doesn’t spend much time in the rotation ends up with a high ankle sprain six games into the restart, it might make more sense to replace them with a player possessing skills Boston currently lacks.
And what skill does Boston need more than bench shooting?
To that end, the Celtics Wire put together a shortlist of the best shooters likely available to play in the ‘Orlando bubble’ — and no, Jamal Crawford isn’t among them (the veteran guard recorded just a 33.1 % rate from 3-point range over the last two seasons).
So if not Crawford, then who?
Let’s take a look at the six best options, noting their 3-point percentage at their last stop in the NBA.
On this day in Philadelphia 76ers history, Jodie Meeks drilled seven 3-pointers and scored 31 points.
With the NBA in an indefinite hiatus due to COVID-19, we continue our day-by-day look back at the history of the Philadelphia 76ers. We continue down our path into Sixers history every day as we look to fill the void left by the absence of basketball.
Friday’s history lesson takes us back to the 2011-12 team that most Sixers fans look back fondly. However, we aren’t talking about Andre Iguodala or Jrue Holiday or even Thaddeus Young. No, we are bringing you up to speed on the great Jodie Meeks who put on a shooting clinic against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
March 27, 2012
The Sixers were in the midst of a tight Atlantic Division race towards the end of the lockout-shortened season. They desperately needed a win and when they hosted the Cavaliers, it presented an opportunity to get that win. After all, the Cavs were just playing out the string on their schedule and it was a game ripe for the picking for Philadelphia.
The Sixers went on to win relatively easily 103-85, but it was not the usual suspects for Philadelphia. Iguodala was out with an injury, so the Sixers needed somebody to step up. That guy turned out to be Meeks who pumped in a then career-high 31 points while drilling seven of his 10 attempts from deep.
Nobody expected Meeks to have the game that he did, but he stepped up in a big way and he reacted to his big night postgame saying:
I just know I was open. I was relaxed and just shot. I haven’t been shooting as well. But I just tried to take good shots. Any time a shooter sees the ball go in the hole, it gives him confidence.
The win that night moved Philadelphia into first place in the division, but unfortunately, they were not able to stay there. They barely made the playoffs as the 8 seed in the East and they upset the 1 seed Chicago Bulls in Round 1 before falling to the Boston Celtics in 7 tough games in the semifinals. [lawrence-related id=28342,28332,28321]
