Adem Bona’s rookie season is another marginal win for the front office

The youngster from UCLA might develop into a long-term backup center which is something the Sixers have been lacking for a while.

With the offseason underway earlier than anticipated back in training camp, there is surely a lot of work ahead for Daryl Morey and his staff. Entering the offseason, Morey and company are in a tough spot. They’ll soon find out if they’re retaining their top-six protected first-round pick in this summer’s draft. They seem to be optimistic about Joel Embiid’s knee and his prognosis for 2025-26, but if they end up landing the fifth or sixth pick in a few weeks, centers will be discussed as options with that selection.

Regardless of how the next five months go for the Sixers, the point remains that there are lots of important decision that need to be made. That’s usually the case when you enter a season with such high expectations like the Sixers did in 2024-25 and end up as one of the league’s worst teams. While the Sixers need to figure out how to shape the top of their roster this year, there were some small wins at the bottom of the roster this season.

Towards the end of the season especially, Adem Bona began to make the most of his playing time. His offensive game is still a ways away from being polished but at the very least he looks like a solid defensive anchor who will rebound well and block a lot of shots. For a player drafted in the middle of the second round, it’s a good foundation to build off of and even if Bona never improves offensively, his defensive floor seems high enough to keep him in the NBA.

Bona was the 41^st overall pick in last summer’s NBA Draft out of UCLA. He played about 15 minutes per game this season and appears to be finding his niche as a nice defensive anchor off the bench. In those 15 minutes per game, he’s averaged over one block and over four rebounds per game. It’s not the biggest sample size of course, but realistically you were just hoping for Bona to showcase enough skills that were worth developing for the rest of his rookie contract and he has done that.

Here’s an impressive stat we saw towards the end of the regular season regarding Bona’s rim protection in the second half of the season:

It stands to reason with a good summer and a strong training camp that Bona would be in line for at least a small uptick in playing time in 2025-26. The Sixers have three more years on Bona’s rookie deal to find out what kind of offensive player he might be able to morph into. If Nick Nurse and the rest of the coaching staff can develop Bona’s offensive game in the years ahead, then there’s a real chance the Sixers will have solved their long-standing backup center problem. Of course, in the most Sixers fashion, there’s a chance they figured out backup center just as Embiid’s future is wildly uncertain.

Some fans are set on the fact that Embiid is never going to get close to the player he once was and the Sixers are saddled with Paul George’s contract for at least a good chunk of the remaining three years it has left. Frankly, it’s probably a fair mindset to have at this point. But under that circumstance, developing Bona for the rest of his rookie contract will be even more important. Whoever is the next long-term starting center for the Sixers, I think it’s a pretty safe bet to assume he won’t be as good as Embiid was. Therefore, the backup center role will become even more important for the Sixers in whatever the next era of Sixers basketball looks like. Perhaps Bona even shows enough improvement to become a starting center, but if he solidifies himself as a backup, it’s still a good win for the Sixers scouting department.

Plucking Bona out of the middle of the second round should also give fans some optimism that the Sixers might be able to find another rotation player in the early portion of this year’s second round with a draft pick we know they’ll have. If Embiid and George can both be healthier and more available next season, then it looks like there’s some depth behind them already and the offseason hasn’t even started yet. So that’s the glass-half-full way of looking at where the Sixers are right now.

Finding enough top-end talent to be able to cope with the dwindling health of Embiid and George will be a challenge, though it could get easier with a lottery win and drafting Cooper Flagg. But, what feels certain at this point is that Bona and a few others have earned longer looks and stand a real shot at becoming long-term bench pieces for the Sixers, regardless of who is starting.

Player Grade: B