Philadelphia head coach Nick Nurse smiles from the bench on Friday, Oct. 11, 2024, at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines.
Wilmington - The quick ride put Adem Bona at ease.
"Wow, I can do this if I have to," he thought out loud. "This won't be a struggle for me."
Bona was glad it was a smooth 30-minute drive to Chase Fieldhouse in Wilmington, Delaware on Sunday. The Sixers were hosting their annual blue and white scrimmage at the home of the Delaware Blue Coats, their G League affiliate.
"It really is amazing. Today, we drove down here. There was no traffic," the rookie big man told reporters after the scrimmage.
Bona was impressed by the facility. He enjoyed how close the fans sat to the court.
"You can hear them yell and react to everything. I really like it," Bona said.
It hardly seems like a tough sales pitch to get him to accept a G-League assignment.
Nick Nurse is the first to admit that the G-League life isn't glamorous. Certainly not compared to life in the NBA.
But, if anyone can appreciate a path through the G-League, it's the Sixers' head coach.
Nurse cut his teeth in the NBA's affiliate league, coaching the Iowa Energy and Rio Grande Valley Vipers en route to earning his first NBA head coaching gig with the Toronto Raptors in 2018.
He knows that a mindset and some humility can be the difference between never sniffing the NBA and finding Max Strus or Derrick Jones Jr.
"Certainly not as glamorous as the NBA. But, my thing, again, in player development is you've got to get on the court and play minutes somewhere, right? And if you're not getting them with us, you're not going to get better," Nurse said on Sunday.
"A basketball season goes by, you got to have as many minutes as you can on the court as a young player to get better. So, that's my selling point: 'You're in our plans, but this is part of the plan, getting you minutes so you can feel some reps and get some experience'."
Rookie Justin Edwards recognizes that a G-League assignment will give him in-game shooting repetitions that he wouldn't receive with the big-league club.
"A little bit of everything, honestly. Like I said, just me learning and me continue to do what I'm doing," Edwards said of his conversations with the Sixers about spending time with the Blue Coats.
"Just be a better, I guess I'd say, knock-down shooter and just continue to do what I'm doing."
Edwards is on a two-way contract. He will spend quite a bit of time on G-League courts this season.
But, the small-market cities, the modest facilities, the austere travel options, it could all be but a memory in the long run if Edwards makes good use of his shooting reps with the Blue Coats.
Bona is down for all of that, too. He sees it as part of the ride on a long, long road.
"Yeah, obviously it's a building process, right? Coming down to Delaware is part of the journey. It's part of getting better. Part of doing what the coaches need me to do, showing them that I can do it," he said.
For Bona, Sunday was an opportunity to get familiar with a place he might call home at times this season.
"Being down here today kind of helps me get familiar with the surroundings, the fans, the staffs. It has been big for me because coming down here is going to help me a lot with my process if I'm not getting minutes up [in Philadelphia]," Bona said.
For Bona and Edwards, it's the first trip up and down Interstate-95 South. It's up to them to decide whether that road takes them to dead ends or to the tops of their worlds.
