A Philly hoops legend is taking on a major role for his hometown team.<\/p>\n
The Sixers will reportedly promote Jameer Nelson to executive vice president of basketball operations, per ESPN\u2019s Shams Charania.<\/p>\n
Nelson was one of four candidates reportedly on Bob Myers\u2019 short list to replace Daryl Morey before the franchise decided to hire Cleveland Cavaliers GM Mike Gansey. Nelson, who previously served as the team\u2019s assistant general manager, was reportedly the only internal candidate under consideration.<\/p>\n
Nelson is one of the most decorated local players in history. The Chester native attended Chester High before heading to Hawk Hill to play for St. Joe\u2019s. Nelson had one of the finest college careers of any Big 5 player. A fantastic four-year run culminated in a magical 2003-04 season in which the Hawks went 27-0 during the regular season, finishing as the No. 1 team in the country. After a disappointing early exit in the A-10 Tournament, St. Joe\u2019s made it all the way to the Elite Eight, losing a 64-62 heartbreaker to Oklahoma State. Nelson was named the Wooden Award winner as college basketball\u2019s top player among a slew of accolades.<\/p>\n
The 6-foot guard was selected 20th overall by the Denver Nuggets in 2004, but was immediately traded to the Magic. Nelson then spent the next decade in Orlando and was named an All-Star in 2008-09. All told, he spent 14 years in the NBA playing for the Magic, Nuggets, Dallas Mavericks, Boston Celtics, New Orleans Pelicans and Detroit Pistons before retiring in 2018.<\/p>\n
Not long after his playing career ended, he was tapped by the Sixers to be the assistant general manager of the Delaware Blue Coats, the team\u2019s G League affiliate, in 2020. He was promoted to GM in 2023-24 and was promoted again this past season as assistant general manager of the Sixers. All indications were Nelson was well-thought of within the organization and would\u2019ve held a big role moving forward, even if he wasn\u2019t named president of basketball operations.<\/p>\n
The announcement of Nelson\u2019s expected promotion also coincided with the news of Elton Brand\u2019s fate. Charania has reported that Brand will not return as Sixers GM, and will work in a new role with Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment. Charania added that Brand chose not to interview for the president of basketball ops position and has been supporting the team\u2019s draft preparation.<\/p>\n
In Myers, Gansey and Nelson, the Sixers have a triumvirate of former high-level basketball players leading things \u2014 a stark departure from the analytics-driven Daryl Morey. We\u2019ll see if it\u2019s a recipe for success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Philly hoops legend is taking on a major role for his hometown team. The Sixers will reportedly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":721571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,102388,85],"class_list":["post-721570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sixers-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=721570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/721571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=721570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=721570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=721570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}