CAMDEN, N.J. — Daryl Morey alluded to a crystal ball in describing the process of vetting NBA draft prospects. But in 19-year-old V.J. Edgecombe, 76ers team president Morey and his front office colleagues saw two important traits.
First was a recognition of talent with humility, of an elevated starting point in an individual who knows he’s far from his final form.
Second was the passion to push toward it.
After the Sixers selected the Baylor University product No. 3 overall in the 2025 NBA Draft on Wednesday night, it didn’t take long in chatting with Edgecombe to grasp what Morey saw in him.
“I think I just need to continue growing in every aspect of the game,” Edgecombe said via a late night Zoom call from Barclays Center in Brooklyn, where the draft was to continue Thursday night. “You never can stop getting better. I’m really focused on shooting the ball at a high level to release pressure off Joel (Embiid) and Tyrese and PG.”
Morey voiced the hope that with Edgecombe in the mix, the 76ers could have one of the league’s better backcourts. It will be led by Tyrese Maxey and 2024 first-rounder Jared McCain. It will likely feature Quentin Grimes and possibly Eric Gordon, with Paul George (P.G.) and Justin Edwards among the wings.
And it will have a similar outlook on basketball, from the soft-spoken yet tenacious McCain, to the budding star Maxey, to the new guard from the Bahamas by way of Baylor. Contained in that journey is a hunger and a shoulder chip, as much as for the undersized McCain or the late-blooming Maxey, that is familiar.
It was evident to Edgecombe upon first meeting Maxey, who came to Philadelphia to watch the guard’s pre-draft workout.
“He’s a great person,” Edgecombe said of Maxey. “We just got to know each other. We didn’t even talk basketball the whole time; talked basketball here and there. It was just talking about, I’m a huge fan of his game. But I got to know him, he’s a great person, super energetic, full of joy, and that’s someone I’m definitely looking forward to working with. That’s going to be my backcourt mate. Hopefully we retire on the same team.”
Edgecombe brings plenty on the court. He’s a long 6-foot-4 with a 6-7½ wingspan. He averaged 15.0 points, 5.6 rebounds and 3.2 assists in his one season at Baylor, where he was the Big 12 Freshman of the Year. He shot 34 percent from 3-point range and has the potential to be a plus defender in the NBA. He’ll likely contribute as a rookie, though Morey cautioned that such a young player (he’ll turn 20 in July) needs time to acclimate.
Edgecombe is saying all the right things about his outlook with the Sixers. He understands that the ball will be in other hands, whether it’s Maxey or George or Embiid. He plans to spend the summer working on ways he can impact games without the ball.
“I feel like I’ll play well off of them,” he said. “I’ve been playing off the ball, so I don’t need the ball to be impactful. Knowing the type of players they are, I feel like I’ll be able to fit right in, play off of them, learn from them, help on the defensive end.”
He also has a defensive mindset that speaks for itself.
“My mentality is not letting (anybody) score,” Edgecombe said. “I hate to see other people score. I just hate to see other people score. That’s my thing. I just do not like to see other people score.”
It’s oversimplification to paint Edgecombe as the underdog coming to a city that adores them. But his journey informs the spark in his game. He was born in Bimini and will be just the seventh player from the Bahamas to play in the NBA. That group doesn’t include Indiana-born Gordon, possibly a new teammate who has represented the Caribbean nation internationally since 2023. (Gordon holds a player option for next season that must be decided on in the next week.)
Edgecombe came to the United States to play basketball, first in Florida as a ninth-grader, then in New York, where he blossomed into a five-star recruit. It’s a blue-collar trajectory, fueled by hard work.
“I know that my path is different from everyone else, so I had to work a little harder, especially being from the Bahamas,” he said. “There ain’t no opportunities, nobody watching you play, no coaches coming to the Bahamas and saying, let me go recruit this kid for D-1. So I know that my work ethic has to be a lot different from everyone else’s, and that’s why I work so hard. I just want to take care of my mama, my little siblings that look up to me. That’s where my work ethic comes from.”
Nothing about Edgecombe’s conversation Wednesday made draft night seem like a culmination. Instead, it sounded like an invitation to keep pushing. And the passion behind that pursuit of improvement ranked as elite in the 76ers’ eyes as anything in his physical toolkit.
“I love the game,” he said. “I feel like if you love the game, if you love something, you put time into it. I just always want to give love to the game, and that’s just by working. The game has blessed me with so much in life. So why must I not put time into it?”
