Following a breakout Olympic performance, the Philadelphia 76ers have signed French forward Guerschon Yabusele to a 1 year, $2.1M contract.
According to reports, Philadelphia contacted Yabusele’s camp following his team’s silver medal at the 2024 Paris Games, with talks intensifying over the weekend. The 76ers weren’t the only club to inquire about the 6’8″ 260lbs power forward’s availability, but the chance to play on a team with championship aspirations, and see meaningful minutes almost immediately ultimately sealed the deal for Yabusele.
The 28 year old is a former 1st round draft pick (16th overall) of the Boston Celtics back in 2016. However, after averaging 2.4pts per game in 7 minutes of playing time a night in 2017-18, and 2.3pts across 6.1 minutes a night the following season, Yabusele took his talents overseas to China, joining the Nanjing Monkey Kings for the 2019-2020 campaign.
The native of Dreux, France then spent parts of two seasons with ASVEL in the French Pro A League, before joining Real Madrid in 2021. Last season he set career highs in FG% (.565), 3P% (.461), FT% (.868), and rebounds per game (4.9) across 27 contests with Real Madrid, 13 of which were starts.
Yabusele then saw his stock rise even more during France’s run to the Olympic gold medal game, scoring 22, 17 and 20 points against Canada, Germany and the United States, respectively. During those three games he shot 16-for-24 (66.7%) from 3-point range and 20-for-34 (58.9%) overall, catching the eye of many an NBA front office executive in the process.
A 3x Spanish Supercup winner, and a member of the 2023 EuroLeague winning squad, Yabusele has about as decorated a basketball resume as one can assemble outside of the NBA. That championship pedigree, and his performance against the American Olympic team has NBA insiders believing that his 2nd taste of NBA action will go much better than his first time around.
For Philadelphia, they add some much needed size and depth to their forward rotation. Although the team acquired Paul George, Caleb Martin, Andre Drummond and Eric Gordon (while also retaining Kelly Oubre and Kyle Lowry), there’s a case to be made that Yabusele will see extended minutes acting as the team’s backup PF in the early goings of 2024-25.
Photo: Dphilmore. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.