Duke Blue Devils: Elton Brand returns to Philadelphia
The Duke Blue Devils currently have three players on the 76ers roster with the return of Elton Brand.
The career of former Duke Blue Devils forward Elton Brand will not end this year. Brand signed a new deal with the Philadelphia 76ers to extend his career to a seventeenth year last week. Brand attempted to retire last year, but was brought in by the 76ers to help mentor their young big men. That role will only get bigger this year as the 76ers bring in more young big men.
Brand will another big body to a team that has drafted Joel Embiid, Nerlens Noel, Jahlil Okafor, and now Ben Simmons in consecutive drafts. Add to that the imminent arrival of Dario Saric and there a lot of mentoring opportunities available for Brand.
Brand also marks a good-sized Duke footprint that exists on the 76ers presently. Brand, Okafor, and guard Gerald Henderson are all on the roster with Duke roots.
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There are so many young big men around for Brand to mentor that rumors continue to circulate that one or more of them will not be on the roster when the season starts. This has been true throughout the off season and was expected to impact the NBA Draft. It didn’t.
The team is supposedly trying to move either Noel or Okafor still. Offensively the two players occupy the same space on the court, and this limits the effectiveness with which they can play together. One would have to imagine that the asking price from the 76ers is just too high right now. More cynically, they could be waiting for a Teddy Bridgewater injury to occur on another team to get their asking price.
The logjam at forward also explains Christian Wood’s move to the Hornets earlier in the summer.
Brand’s value will not be found in the minutes he plays. He can offer a veteran voice to a team that was rather devoid of those voices until this summer. This year at least he will have Henderson to help him sort out leadership on a team that could use it.