Here’s another Elton that isn’t letting the sun go down on him just yet.
According to a report by Shams Charania of Yahoo! Sports on Monday, former No. 1 overall pick Elton Brand is coming out of retirement to sign a deal with the Philadelphia 76ers.
The Philadelphia 76ers plan to sign veteran forward Elton Brand today, league sources tell Yahoo Sports.
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) January 4, 2016
The 36-year-old Brand last played for the Atlanta Hawks before announcing his retirement in August 2015. He holds career averages of 16.1 points per game, 8.6 rebounds per game, and 1.7 blocks per game across 16 NBA seasons. He previously was a Sixer for four seasons, signing a five-year, $82 million deal with the team in 2008 before being waived via the amnesty provision in 2012.
Brand himself confirmed the news with a self-authored piece in The Cauldron entitled “Because I’m Not Through With This Game Yet, That’s Why.”
“The truth is, my decision to return to the NBA isn’t about money, and it isn’t about rings,” Brand says in the piece. “It isn’t even about me, really, although every athlete would like to go out on his or her own terms. It’s about repaying what’s owed, about making sure that the young men who follow in my footsteps get what they’re entitled to (and what I haven’t always given them).
“I wasn’t quite ready to let this part of my life go,” he concludes.
Brand’s impact will be significant for Philadelphia, maybe not in terms of his tangible contributions on the court, but in guiding the fledgling young Sixers to the basketball light. One such player Brand mentions by name is 20-year-old Jahlil Okafor, a traditional back-to-the-basket big man that went to Duke and was selected with a high lottery pick, just like Brand. Okafor has displayed some questionable judgments early on in his rookie season, and will really benefit from Brand’s veteran savvy, both as a player and as a person.
Brand is also familiar with current Sixers Chairman of Basketball Operations, Jerry Colangelo, having played under Colangelo at the international level for Team USA.
The sheer lack of veteran presences to develop their young talent by showing them the ropes of NBA life has always been the fundamental flaw of “The Process” for Philadelphia. Brand certainly won’t turn the 3-33 Sixers around from a win-loss perspective. But his addition to the locker room is exactly the type of move this franchise needs to make in order to get back to a sense of respectability after three seasons and counting now in the gutter.
