By Matt Gregan, Sports Talk Philly Staff
Philadelphia 76ers general manager Elton Brand stayed busy during the first full day of the NBA's free agency period, inking veteran big man Kyle O'Quinn to a contract for the veteran minimum according to PhillyVoice's Kyle Neubeck. The contract is reportedly worth $2.1 million.
The Sixers are signing Kyle O'Quinn, I'm told.
— Kyle Neubeck (@KyleNeubeck) July 2, 2019
O'Quinn is coming off of a down year for the Indiana Pacers in which he played only 8.2 minutes per game. However, in the 2017-18 season with the New York Knicks, O'Quinn was a solid role player off the bench. He averaged 7.1 points and 6.1 rebounds in 18 minutes per game while shooting a career-high 58.3 percent from the field.
The veteran big man can score and rebound when asked, but he is a low minutes player at this point in his career. With the main backup center minutes going to newly signed Al Horford (assuming that head coach Brett Brown tinkers around with the rotations to make that work), the 76ers won't be asking O'Quinn to play many minutes on most nights.
After the team's opening moves in free agency, they don't have much cap space available to fill out the remainder of their roster. Expect to see more of these kinds of deals from the Sixers throughout the remainder of free agency as the team attempts to fill out its roster with cheap players.