Sixers Cut Bowman, Christmas
The 76ers cut two of their invitees to training camp yesterday, parting ways with Brandon Bowman of Georgetown and Dionte Christmas of Temple.
Christmas, a 6’5” guard from Temple, averaged 1.8 points and 1.3 rebounds in 7.5 minutes of play in four preseason games. Bowman, a 6’9” forward who graduated from Georgetown in 2006, averaged 3.3 points and 2.3 rebounds in 8.5 minutes.
“It’s the hardest part of the job,” Sixers coach Eddie Jordan said about making cuts. “You guys thought talking to [the media] was the hardest part of the job. My job was to get 10 guys on the floor meshing together, if not 13. Then, there were the undrafted players that we had in for spot duty, and we evaluated them in that process. Nobody really knocked our socks off. Certainly, if there was a case where we as an organization decided, ‘Let’s keep 15,’ those two guys would have stayed. They are good enough to be in the NBA, but not good enough to make a 13-man roster in our case.”
Despite not having a place for Christmas on the team currently, Sixers GM Ed Stefanski raved about his basketball abilities, hinting that Christmas would be the first name they called if a roster spot opens up.
“Is he an NBA player?” Stefanski said. “I think eventually he will be an NBA player. I can’t say enough about the kid. That’s why we brought him to our summer-league team, and that’s why we brought him here. He has to get seasoning. He has to get experience. But it takes time to get that in when you’re talking about putting guys on the roster. We want to keep those spots available if we find someone who we think can help the team. That’s what we’ll do. But he had a very good camp, and he and Bowman went down to the bitter end.”
Christmas was arrested by Philadelphia police on Thursday night for a felony weapons offense, after police found him driving F Marreese Speights’ car with a loaded 9mm semi-automatic handgun underneath the driver’s door.
