As the Sixers’ injuries piled up this season, two-way guard Jeff Dowtin Jr. was called upon to help the team to the end of the season. Now, he faces a crossroads as he runs out of two-way eligibility headed into free agency.
The Philadelphia 76ers’ 2024-25 season had run completely off the tracks and over a cliff by early in the new calendar year. With half of the roster filling out the injury reports every day, the Sixers had to turn to some deep rotation players to finish out the last few months of the season.
One such player was two-way guard Jeff Dowtin Jr., who featured in a career-high 41 NBA contests playing 15.1 minutes a night. He actually hit the 50-game limit for games allowed on the active roster set for two-way players.
“Whenever you get the opportunity to play, you got to be ready,” Dowtin explained. “Sometimes it might not be when you want it to happen, but like I say, stay ready. That’s why I always keep the same routine, no matter what—same workout regimen, same meal every gameday—because you never know. Whenever your name is called, just be ready to perform.”
Sixers coach Nick Nurse called Dowtin’s name early and often. Even with the two-way restrictions, it was a drastic increase in workload at the top level for the guard, who spent most of his time in 2023-24 down in the G League with the Delaware Blue Coats. In that campaign, he played in just 12 games for the Sixers, averaging 4.3 points and 2.3 assists on 0.4 turnovers in 11.8 minutes per game. He sank 47 percent of his 19 triple attempts.
This season, Dowtin was given the opportunity to string together some consistent floor time at the top level as injuries piled up for the Sixers and the season became more and more lost. To his credit, he was able to get into a bit of a groove. March was the most clear showcase for Dowtin at the NBA level. Across 13 games that month, he averaged 12.8 points per game on 57.4% field goal shooting (on 8.8 attempts per game) and 50.0% shooting from beyond the arc (on 2.8 attempts).
After those 13 contests, however, Dowtin was pushing the limits of the two-way contract restrictions. He was only able to play in two of the Sixers’ remaining nine games.
“It was definitely a challenge for me, you know, just having a stretch of great basketball playing at the highest level—probably the best stretch that I had—and then knowing that your games are limited so you don’t really have that rhythm that you can just stay in throughout the rest of the year so definitely a challenge for me,” Dowtin explained. “I think I handled that to the best of my ability.”
He made the most of his penultimate appearance this season, putting up a career-high 30 points on 11-for-15 field goal shooting on April 9th against the Washington Wizards.
The tough thing to remember, though, is that he was playing 21.6 minutes a night to get into this groove. The Sixers were 3-10 in March across contests featuring Dowtin and every opponent knew that Philadelphia were simply trying to limp to the finish line. The progress Dowtin has made individually is evident, but the progress must be taken with a grain of salt—some of those late season games between the tanking Sixers and their tanking opponents were borderline G League-level contests.
Dowtin finished averaging 7.0 points per game, shooting 48.7% from the floor and 40.0% on triples (1.7 attempts per game) with 1.5 rebounds and 1.9 assists in 15.1 minutes per game.
Despite the train wreck of a season for the team overall, Dowtin seemed to appreciate his extended time spent with the Sixers’ organization and players that were just trying to make the most of a sincerely tough year alongside him.
“Throughout the season, the ups and downs, we always stayed together like a big family. Obviously it wasn’t the season that we intended on having, but we still stayed together. We still had confidence in ourselves, we never got down on one another, we still communicated as a brotherhood, as a family,” Dowtin said. “So I appreciate that guys were always in the gym, still working out no matter what, trying to get better at their game and get better at their craft. That’s a culture that you love to be apart of.”
The hitch in the situation is that Dowtin now has four years of experience in the NBA, which means he is no longer eligible to be signed on a two-way contract. If the Sixers want to keep him, it will have to be in one of their fifteen standard contract slots. Whether they opt to do that or not, especially considering the lineup of guards they expect to have healthy for next season, we will just have to wait and see.
While Dowtin continues to progress, the guard is approaching his 28th birthday in the coming weeks. His time to fully break out into a definitive NBA-level player, with Philadelphia or elsewhere, may be quickly running out.
PLAYER GRADE – C+