VJ Edgecombe had heard the whispers.<\/p>\n
They said that his draft stock had continued to climb after he finished his freshman season at Baylor. They suggested he might even be the third pick in the 2025 NBA Draft Wednesday night. But he had nothing concrete until he got the call from the Philadelphia 76ers and found out it was true.<\/p>\n
It was 15 seconds later that NBA commissioner Adam Silver announced his name. <\/p>\n
\u201cI had no clue what was going on,\u201d said Edgecombe, the two-time Newsday Long Island Player of the Year out of Long Island Lutheran High. \u201cI was like just living in the moment until they [told] me that I\u2019m going there . . . They hadn\u2019t told me [anything] \u2014 it was all up in the air.\u201d <\/p>\n
The moment, those 15 seconds, were a little overwhelming. But he found his focus on the future quickly. <\/p>\n
\u201cI work hard and everything is paying off, but the work won\u2019t stop,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m definitely looking forward to going to Philly, meeting the team, getting ready for Summer League, training camp and all that. I\u2019m focused on playing now.\u201d <\/p>\n
Edgecombe said Tuesday that he\u2019d come to LuHi from the Bahamas to go against the highest level of high school competition. Now he gets a crack at the highest level there is. <\/p>\n
\u201cEvery night you\u2019re going to see something different,\u201d Edgecombe, 19, said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got to be mentally prepared for that, knowing that it\u2019s grown men I\u2019m going against.\u201d <\/p>\n
Philadelphia has other young, talented guards in Tyrese Maxey and Jared McCain. Asked if he knows where he will fit, Edgecombe replied, \u201cIt\u2019s the NBA and they ain\u2019t going to promise you nothing.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just going in there, whatever the coach needs me to do, I\u2019m going to go do,\u201d he added. \u201cIf that requires me coming off the bench, if that requires me starting [or] playing alongside both Maxey and McCain, it doesn\u2019t matter. I\u2019m just going there to play.\u201d <\/p>\n
Edgecombe knows that the 76ers haven\u2019t won a championship since 1983 and that there is a fan base starved for a title. But he likes the situation. <\/p>\n
\u201c[Winning it] would mean a lot,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a minute since they won, so just going there and being that piece that\u2019s going to help them get over the hump would mean a lot to me, would mean a lot to the fans . . . I\u2019m excited to go out there and see what we can do.\u201d <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n\tRoger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"VJ Edgecombe had heard the whispers. They said that his draft stock had continued to climb after he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125173,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3769],"tags":[679,7,25346,6,678,207,3817],"class_list":{"0":"post-125172","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-76ers","8":"tag-76ers","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-li-athletes","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-philadelphia-76ers","14":"tag-philadelphia76ers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114747534494647069","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}