With a week to go before the season begins in Boston, Sixers coach Brett Brown and general manager Sam Hinkie still have the tough task in deciding which 15 players are going to make the trip and which five are not.
Some, of course, are givens. Jahlil Okafor, Nerlens Noel and injured players Joel Embiid, Carl Landry, Kendall Marshall, Nik Stauskas and Tony Wroten are also going to be on the roster. Isaiah Canaan, Robert Covington, Jerami Grant, Hollis Thompson, JaKarr Sampson and rookie Richaun Holmes also seem to have spots sewn up.
That leaves point guards Pierre Jackson, T.J. McConnell and Scottie Wilbekin on the fence with forwards Furkan Aldemir, J.P. Tokoto and Christian Wood.
When the Sixers face the Celtics on Friday night in Manchester, New Hampshire, several players will be fighting for jobs with the point guards taking on the most scrutiny.
With Marshall and Wroten out of the lineup until November at the earliest, Jackson, McConnell and Wilbekin are in a dead heat for the backup point guard job. But if one player needs an extraordinary performance to make the team, it’s Jackson.
The 5-foot-11 guard missed all of last season with a ruptured Achilles and has been struggling with a nagging groin injury since the summer. He’s appeared in two preseason games, but played only limited minutes.
Brown isn’t sure Jackson can help the team.
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“I don’t think so. I think he’s still not 100 percent,” Brown said after Wednesday’s practice at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. “I challenge him hard, I go after him hard defensively. Because if he’s going to be that dynamic and elusive a scorer with his stature, you better be ruthless and game-changing defensively. Right now I see Pierre struggling to move laterally and keep someone in front of him.
“We need that on defense and if he can’t do that because of his groin, well then that hurts him.”
Even though he was undersized at guard, Jackson averaged 19.8 points in his sophomore season at Baylor University and scored 29.1 points with 6.2 assists per game in 31 D-League games. In one of those games Jackson set the league’s single-game scoring record with 58 points.
But that was before the Achilles and hamstring injuries. Brown hasn’t seen that same explosiveness from Jackson in workouts with the Sixers.
“I haven’t coached him enough to know that. He does care and he knows when I’m challenging him — he understands fully what we’re looking for,” Brown said. “He’s struggling a little bit physically to deliver. He admits it. He just told me that.”
Meanwhile, Brown expects the players who will be with the club when the regular season begins to see a few more minutes Friday night.
“We’re going to blend it where we have our guys that we know are going to be on the team to get extended minutes. I want them playing because it’s the last time we play. Then there are those who need a little bit of a chance. That’s a juggling act.”
Brown also said he thinks the players on the fence know where they stand and know what they have to do before the team makes its cuts. Wood, the undrafted rookie who has impressed in workouts and notched a double-double last week in New York, thinks he has a chance to be there opening night.
“I think my chances [of making team] are pretty high,” Wood said. “I think I've shown them what I can do.”
But now is no time to rest on any laurels. Friday's game could sway a decision or two.