The summer league is over for the Philadelphia 76ers after Friday’s win over the Brooklyn Nets in Las Vegas. The Sixers played eight games in total–three in Salt Lake City and five in Vegas–and their attention now turns to making sure they lock up Quentin Grimes as well as preparing for the 2025-26 season.
This edition now turns to Justin Edwards who didn’t have a dominant showing, but he played well. He averaged 12.7 points and shot 40.5% from deep while also pulling down 3.7 rebounds per game in the six games he played. He appeared in three Salt Lake City games and three in Vegas.
For Edwards, his takeaways from the summer league are:
3-point shooting
Summer league coach TJ DiLeo and his staff continued to push Edwards to put up more 3-pointers and he did just that. He only took 4.3 attempts in the 2024-25 season–knocking them down at a 36.3% clip–and he ended up taking 6.2 per game in the summer league. One could argue that some of them were ill-advised or what have you, but Edwards was able to knock them down at an efficient rate. That has to carry over in the 2025-26 season in an effort to keep the floor spaced for the star trio to operate.
Ball-handling
The summer Sixers didn’t exactly have a main ball-handler to run the offense. While the plan was for Jalen Hood-Schifino to handle all of that, the Sixers could not get into any of their offensive sets and had trouble getting the ball across half-court against pressure. Therefore, Edwards stepped in to provide a lot of help in that department which is something that, again, he has to build on for the upcoming season. If the Sixers can put the ball in his hands and have him comfortably run offense, then it helps in terms of versatility and being able to have others handle the ball and take pressure off Tyrese Maxey in that respect.
Free-throw attempts
As a rookie, Edwards attempted 1.0 free throws per game. In the summer league, that number was up to 2.2 per game. If that number continues to rise, then it adds another element of his game in which the Sixers can rely on in terms of their offensive ecosystem. While the focus for Philadelphia will continue to be on Joel Embiid, Maxey, and Paul George, if the Sixers are going to get an aggressive Edwards, then they will be in great shape moving forward. His ability to get to the foul line and get some easy points will do a lot of good things for the offense.