McCaffery: Survivor Covington back to help Sixers
CAMDEN, N.J. >> As the NBA season begins this week, there will be LeBron James, starting for the Lakers.
And there will be Kawhi Leonard, starting for Toronto.
And there will be one of the NBA’s top defenders, a good shooter, a good teammate and a major contributor to a team that won 52 times last season, starting for the Sixers.
Robert Covington: NBA survivor.
While the Sixers will pretend otherwise, this was not their plan. They even provided proof of that late last season when they rolled out some cockamamie advertising logo that included the likenesses of Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, Dario Saric, J.J. Redick and T.J. McConnell. And they might as well have called Covington an Uber the night Brett Brown announced the Sixers’ plan to go “star hunting” … or a Lyft the day after, when he said it again.
While it wasn’t certain that Covington would have departed in any star-hunting initiative, it was certain that he would not have survived in the starting lineup, even though he started in all 80 games he played last season. Yet the player who’d arrived early in the 2013-2014 season off a G-League (then, the D-League, and don’t ask) roster, continues to have staying power … and not just at the defensive end.
“I didn’t pay attention to it, honestly,” Covington said, as the preseason rolled to a stop. “I’ve been hearing that for the past three years. I just have to focus on what I can do in this organization. As long as I have been here, that’s what my focus was.
“There were rumors about trades and what-not. But if something doesn’t happen, you really can’t focus in on that.”
Professionally, that was his best play. But there was not a basketball fan on the planet — and it is a global game — who didn’t know the Sixers’ unholy rebuilding process was concocted to build a young nucleus, collect cash and cap space, and then make a run at James in the summer of 2018. If so, that would have bumped Covington from the starting three-spot, if he were to remain a Sixer at all. Yet rather than creating a stir, Covington did what he does best, particularly at the defensive end: He kept working.
“I took threes,” Covington said, of his summer. “Normally, there is a lot of focus on that. But this year, it was more finishes, floaters, mid-range, reading defenses. Of course, I did shoot threes. But not to the extent that I did in previous years.
“The way teams are guarding me, they know I am a three-point shooter. So I had to work on what I had to do after that. The coaches saw me working. My teammates saw me. I feel more comfortable ball handling. And I will show that.”
At 27, Covington has shown plenty. Oddly, though, he has been under-appreciated by a fan base ever hoping for more, and ever anxious to boo whenever he misses three consecutive shots. Yet on a team that will start Markelle Fultz and Ben Simmons, who combined are not likely to average two three-point buckets a game, Covington has immense two-way value. He can get hot from distance. And, yes, that would have been him on the NBA’s All-Defensive team last season with Rudy Gobert, Anthony Davis, Victor Oladipo and Jrue Holiday.
Obviously, any addition of James would have been a franchise-history changer. And if Covington were lost in that swirl, well, the resulting search party would have had exactly zero volunteers. But playing for Brown, who insists that his players defend, Covington is a solid, reliable, durable fallback option.
“I’ve been here five years, and each and every year I have grown,” Covington said. “I’ve gotten a challenge from Coach. And we have a team that competes. It just shows that at the right time and the right moment, everything is possible, especially if you focus in on what you are doing.”
No matter how his story ends in Philadelphia, it will have been one of determination and achievement. As the Sixers have grown from unacceptable to contention, Covington has been there for every shift. So as he grows closer to 30 than to 25, he should be at his physical peak. And right at a time when the Sixers were looking for a star, their word, there is a chance they could yet have one in Covington.
“There’s still a lot more to go,” Covington said. “A lot more to go. You never get settled. And this summer, with what I’ve done, I’ve seen my game evolve. So it’s only touching what I can be. Even though this is my sixth year, there is still a lot more I can learn, still a lot I can do, and still a lot that I can add to my game. The ceiling hasn’t even been reached yet. And as the years go on, I will continue to grow.”
If he grows from last season, when he averaged
12.6 points, 5.4 rebounds, a career-high 2.0 assists and
1.7 steals, shooting 41.3 percent from the field and
36.9 percent from the arc, then the Sixers may have what they were looking for, back when Covington wasn’t paying attention to the chatter.
“I saw it,” he said. “I heard it. But it didn’t stop me from doing what I had to do this summer. It didn’t stop me from my goals.”
That much will be clear Tuesday in Boston, when the starting lineups are announced … and when they include a familiar survivor, willing and improved.