By Sean Kennedy (@PhillyFastBreak)
New front office decision-maker Bryan Colangelo and the Sixers entered 2016 free agency with a clear objective in free agency: add veterans to the team to erase the perception (which rightly or wrongly existed among some in the NBA community) that the organization was a laughingstock, without doing anything to damage the team’s flexibility in the long term. Already, Colangelo had secured shorter-team, reasonably priced deals with Jerryd Bayless and Sergio Rodriguez. Tuesday afternoon, he bolstered the backcourt even further with a signing along a similar vein.
Free agent guard Gerald Henderson reaches agreement with Sixers on two-year, $18 million pact, league sources inform @clevelanddotcom.
— Chris Haynes (@ChrisBHaynes) July 5, 2016
The deal represents a homecoming for the 28-year-old Henderson, who played his high school ball alongside Wayne Ellington at The Episcopal Academy in Newtown Square. His father, Gerald Henderson, Sr., also played 2 seasons for the Sixers as part of his 13-year NBA career.
On the court, the younger Henderson had a solid season in a reserve role with Portland last year, shooting a career-high 35.3% from three-point range. For his career, Henderson has knocked down only 31.9% of his shots from behind the arc, relying more on a mid-range game during his 6 seasons in Charlotte.
While the average-at-best shooting is not an ideal fit around Ben Simmons, Henderson is not at all ball-dominant and very comfortable playing off the ball offensively. Furthermore, he will arguably be the team’s best wing defender on the opening night roster. At 6’5″ with a 6’10” wingspan, and 215 pounds, Henderson has the size and strength to match up against opposing small forwards, and enough quickness to guard more traditional twos.
When it comes down to it, Henderson is another professional player on a roster that was mostly devoid of such guys last season. The Sixers already obtained their franchise building blocks in Simmons and Embiid. Now, they are fleshing out the rest of the roster to ensure a certain degree of competitiveness returns to the Wells Fargo Center, while maintaining cap flexibility for 2018 and beyond. By then, the time will be on the rise in the standings, and therefore able to attract higher-profile free agents, while also needing to extend the young building blocks.
It’s not quite the Process, but the Sixers do still have a plan which they are sticking to during this offseason. A long-term plan is all Philadelphia fans ever really wanted from their team. It’s good to know that though a lot has changed, that basic fact has not.
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