Sixers Summer League minicamp kicked off today in Camden, and while it’s not nearly as exciting as free agency, we got some good nuggets, some good quotes from the group.

Delaware Blue Coats head coach Connor Johnson will be leading the squad in Vegas, a roster highlighted by Zhaire Smith, Shake Milton, Haywood Highsmith, and draft picks Matisse Thybulle and Marial Shayok. Norvel Pelle returns for another go while Tobias Harris’ brother, Terry, is also included.

First, let’s start it off with some video! Yes! It’s that time of the year, time to overreact to 20 second video clips.

Here’s Thybulle shooting some three pointers:

Seriously though, it’s a consistent stroke. Same mechanics, solid repetition. That’s what you’re looking for, and Thybulle is a guy who did shoot 40% from three as a sophomore and 35% as a junior before inexplicably dropping to 30% from three as a senior.


Here’s what Johnson had to say about Thybulle, and what stood out to him, after the jump:

Johnson: I think Matisse, his active hands to me are the most impressive thing that he does. He gets his hands on a lot of basketballs in a variety of different ways. We’re working on him with trying to pick up a lot of the concepts and schemes, but you can see he’s got a natural ability to make deflections and disrupt passes in a way that I think can be really helpful.

Q: What’s the biggest defensive adjustment for him going from zone to man? Is it going over and under screens? Chasing guys around the floor?

Johnson: I think it’s not as big of an adjustment as we might think. In the end, he’s got great instincts and great hands. That gets you pretty far, just to begin with. That ability to kind of get into the ball, it happens in man and it happens in zone. Now the broader team concepts, to your point, I think are a little bit different, but I don’t see that being a huge obstacle. He picks things up fast, and like I said, the ability to have instincts for what’s going on and get your hands on the basketball, that’s gonna prove well for him, in my opinion.

Thybulle said as much, too, explaining this about the main difference between playing 2-3 zone and playing a man-to-man scheme with the Sixers:

“I think the physicality. I think that’s also (a part) of just going from college to the NBA. You’re allowed to get into the ball a little bit more. In the zone we just kind of corralled the ball, we didn’t pressure too much on ball. Now it’s being able to get up into the ball handler, that sort of thing.”

Turns out Thybulle is a good quote, and he talked about a variety of topics during five minutes with the media on Monday.

Among those topics:

Is anybody recognizing him?

“Yeah, a little bit. I try to keep a low profile, just so I can try to explore a little bit. But it’s kind of cool to see how invested the fans are, to see me wearing just a black shirt and some shorts and they recognize me on the street, that’s pretty cool.”

Has he had a cheesesteak yet?

“I actually don’t eat steak. So no.”

Q: Veggie cheesesteak? 

“We’ll see.”

Q: No meat?

“No red meat.”

Q: Chicken cheese steak?

“I could try that. You guys have any recommendations?

Q: Dalessandro’s (three people said this at the same time)

“Okay I’ll go with that one.”

Q: If you want chicken, Ishkabibble’s on South Street.

“Okay I’ll have to write these down.”

These are the kinds of hard-hitting questions you only get from us, the Philadelphia sports media.

One more nugget on west coast basketball:

Crossing Broad: Is there anything we should know about PAC-12 basketball? We don’t see a lot of west coast games out here on the east coast.

Thybulle: So that was one of the things that was really interesting getting out here, just seeing how removed the east and west coasts are. I come out here and I’m like, ‘yeah I’m from Washington,’ and people are like, ‘oh, D.C.?’ And it’s ‘no, Seattle Washington.’ That’s been an interesting adjustment.

Crossing Broad: Some people don’t even know Washington is a state.

Thybulle: Yeah, so I tell them I went to college out there and they say, ‘oh, so you went to Washington State?’ And I’m like, ‘no, no no no.’ But it’s been an interesting adjustment.

Crossing Broad: Anything unique about the brand of basketball out there?

Thybulle: Hard to say, because college ball is so different from the NBA. I’d just say that we shoot a lot of threes and play fast on the west coast, especially in the PAC 12.

That’s what the Sixers wanna do – shoot threes and play fast.