4 days Ago By Sixers Wire
PHILADELPHIA -- The Philadelphia 76ers found a diamond in the rough when they brought back Guerschon Yabusele from France on a minimum deal late in the offseason. After two seasons with the Boston Celtics, Yabusele spent five seasons away from the NBA working on his craft and taking steps forward as a player. In his first season back in the NBA with the Sixers, he averaged 11.
0 points, 5.6 rebounds, and 2.1 assists while shooting 50.
1% from the floor and 38% from deep. He was a fantastic piece for the Sixers and was willing to do whatever it was coach Nick Nurse and Co. asked of him, whether it was play his natural position at the 4, or play bigger opponents at the 5.
As Yabusele now enters free agency, one has to wonder what comes next for The Dancing Bear."I'm going to be a free agent," he said on Sunday. "I think it's going to be like one of my first time in my career to be able to be in that situation.
So I'm pretty excited, and at the same time, I'm going to take my time to really see what the option’s going to be. What’s the playing time, what's going to be. This is, like, one of the main concerns, but I'm really not putting any pressure into myself.
Just going there to really trying to have some fun and really look for the solution for me."Yabusele played 70 games with 43 starts while playing 27.1 minutes per night.
The big man will be looking to take advantage of a very productive season. He will certainly demand a big pay raise from the $2.1 million he received in the 2024-25 season, but he did have a lot of fun playing for the Sixers in his first season in Philadelphia.
"I had a lot of fun this season," Yabusele added. "Of course, we have a lot of ups and downs, and, obviously, we don't have the end of the season that we was hoping to have at the beginning of the year, but other than that, I had a lot of fun being here. I enjoyed every day being around my teammates, the coach, everybody around us.
For me personally, it was a tough year. I learned a lot was just trying to get better every day, but my hope was to go over there to play hard as I can, learn, and try to get better."While free agency will begin on June 30, Yabusele is not thinking about any of that at the moment.
His first season back in the league is what he is focused on. He is going to take time to rest and decompress a bit before getting into any free agency talks."We just ended the last game of the season," he said.
"So I didn't really thought about it, but from coming in here after out of the league for five years, I'm so grateful for the Sixers to be able to give me that chance, and for sure, we will have a lot of talk this offseason."This article originally appeared on Sixers Wire: Guerschon Yabusele discusses future as 1st Sixers season wraps up.
