Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Luwawu-Cabarrot still working to make a score
Another 76ers rookie camp day was ending, and that meant the usual for Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot. It meant it was time to move from one court to the other and to try to fill a Brett Brown wish.
It was just about halfway through last season when Brown began to see the completion of the Sixers’ years-long rebuilding project. The foundation pieces, even if some were injured, were in place. From there, he would need, in no particular order, shooters, shooters and shooters.
So Friday, LuwawuCabarrot was on the court, along with Joel Embiid and Robert Covington, shooting. And shooting. And shooting some more. Free throws. Three-pointers. From the corner, from the top of the key, from the unofficial four-point line featured on the Sixers’ practice floor, the distance from which so many NBA offenses now begin.
He’s just 22, but in the context of what the Sixers have been plotting this week, he is a veteran. He has played for money in France since he was 16, and as a rookie with the Sixers last season he played in 69 games, starting 16. He will join the rookies, free agents and other scattered dreamers in the Utah Jazz and Las Vegas summer leagues, an indication of his still-developing status within the operation. But he is determined to make it work.
“I just want to be more confident,” LuwawuCabarrot was saying, during the Sixers’ summer league camp at their training complex. “I want to show that I can play. I can score the ball. I can run. I can defend. I can be a good overall player.”
It’s what the Sixers had in mind when they made him a first-round draft choice last June, even if at No. 24 overall that news was suffocated by the topof-the-draft plucking of Ben Simmons. And he had his moments as a rookie, averaging 6.4 points and playing substantially better late in the season than earlier.
But the Sixers’ roster is in transition, and Luwawu-Cabarrot will need to be at his best to stay off the Philly-to-Delaware G-League shuffle. It’s why he didn’t need to be asked to play on the Sixers’ summer league teams and, in effect, just made himself omnipresent around the program.
“I wanted to play in the summer league,” he said. “I wanted to come here and just play and be free and score points and run the floor and bring the leadership and get some more experience, too.”
It’s a valuable outlook, particularly since he played last summer, too. Already, he has tried to assist with the transition of Markelle Fultz to the pro game, as he did last year with Simmons. Yet he is at his own career turning point. Brown is going to be demanding better outside shooting at any of his deeper roster spots. And Luwawu-Cabarrot will have an early chance to show that ability.
“I couldn’t tell you what the future will be for him,” said Billy Lange, Brown’s assistant and the Sixers’ summer league coach. “But I can tell you what he needs to do to become a better basketball player: Just continue to hunt three-point shots and be able to knock them down.”
The 6-6 Luwawu-Cabarrot took 161 three-pointers as a rookie and knocked down 50, a .311 pace that must be improved. Yet he did show that ability often enough to suggest growth. He made four of five threepointers in an April loss to Indiana, shooting 8-for-12 overall, in the next-to-last game of the season. And he was 4-for-10 from distance against Brooklyn in March. Overall in April, he shot 35-for-78, so adding to his appeal that he hardly wanted his rookie season to end.
“If the next season was to start the next day,” he said, “I would have been ready for that.”
It didn’t. But LuwawuCabarrot made it seem that way, continuing to work during and after practice.
“What he does really well, and what everybody saw last year, is that he moves well without the ball,” Lange said. “So he’s not a guy that has to have the basketball to be effective. He is a really good floor-runner. He’s really good at just cutting and moving without the basketball in the half-court, and with guys like Ben and Joel, that’s a real needed skill for us.
“So if we can develop the three-point shot a little better, Timmy will play a lot.”
That’s why he was out there long after the formal workout Friday, shooting … and shooting some more.
“I still have to work off the dribble and that kind of stuff, the step-back, things like that,” he said. “But when I was not playing a lot, I practiced in the gym. So my shot is getting better.”