I Can't Believe How Good VJ Edgecombe Is at Shooting Already
AU marvels at how VJ quickly got good at the one thing he wasn't supposed to get good at.
I was in on VJ Edgecombe as the Sixers’ pick basically from the beginning. I mean, the fuck do I know about prospects — YouTube scouting is a young man’s game, and the number of men’s college games I watched in 2025 was probably lower than the number of times I watched Heat on cable — but I liked what I heard about him, he seemed like an obvious fit, The Danny was basically in, the idea of having All The Guards seemed fun, all good enough for me. I couldn’t say I was exactly excited about him, though — particularly not for him as a rookie. Even through Summer League and preseason, as everyone was working themselves into a lather over his impressive stat lines and explosive dunks, I was still pretty tepid on the Edgecombe experience. I believed in him long-term, but short-term I thought he might be a bit of a frustrating watch.
And that was for one forgivable but undeniable and unavoidable reason: He couldn’t shoot.
I loved the athleticism, the motor, the toughness, the fact that he kinda looked like Jimmy Butler on the court. But he couldn’t shoot, and I couldn’t act like that didn’t bother me. You may recall the Sixers have had something of a spotty history when it comes to non-shooting guards, and I didn’t relish the opportunity to jump head first into another long and frustrating relationship with another one of those dudes. Which isn’t to say I assumed Edgecombe would definitely be that way forever, but in his first season, it seemed a guarantee. Rookie guards who struggle with their jumper in college don’t immediately become knockdown shooters just because we want them to, and what I saw from his preseason just reinforced that while he wasn’t totally inept as a shooter, he had a ways to go to be any kind of consistent threat. History said that however long it’d take him to get there, it’d certainly take longer than his rookie year.
But history was wrong. I was wrong. We’re not even halfway into his rookie year and I already feel unnervingly confident in saying: VJ Edgecombe can shoot. And it’s changed everything about who I think he can be and what I think he can do for this team.
The wild thing is: I was proven right about VJ before I was proven wrong. When he got off to that blazing shooting start to the year — 18-41 (44%) from deep in his first seven games — and everyone was already over the moon about him, I I was taking a deep breath and waiting for the regression to hit. And it did: Over his next seven games, he shot just 10-37 (27%) from distance, dropping his overall percentage to the mid-30s, and I took a long, obnoxious Told You So victory lap over it. But then the seven games after that, he heated up again, going 13-28 (46%) and unregressing the regression. He hasn’t had an extended cold streak since.
Which isn’t to say he’s suddenly 2006 Ray Allen. VJ’s currently hitting 37.4% of his threes on about six attempts a game; respectable numbers but hardly scorching, particularly by modern NBA standards. But he seems to have found a degree of consistency that’s pretty impressive for any rookie guard, let alone one coming in with shooting as his presumed swing skill. From Nov. 9 to Dec. 20, he hit at least one three in 15 straight games: That might not sound like a lot, but that’s actually the second-longest such streak for a rookie in Sixers history — only my beloved Landry Shamet boasts a longer one, hitting in 22 straight in late 2018 before being included in the still-unforgivable Tobias Harris trade. Tyrese Maxey, now one of the marquee bombers in the entire league, never had a streak longer than two in his first year.
That’s largely due to opportunity, of course: Where Maxey flitted in and out of the rotation as a rookie, Edgecombe was installed as the starting two-guard on opening night and hasn’t left the first five since. But it’s opportunity that Edgecombe is seizing, and regularly. Just as impressive as his number of makes this year from deep has been his number of takes — he attempted 13 triples in his debut, and has shot at least two in every game since. Where a lot of young Sixers guards — even ones whose stories don’t end tragically — lost confidence in their jumper at various points and spent stretches pump-faking at ghosts, VJ shoots when it’s time to shoot, and doesn’t seem to let the results of those shots make him more or less willing to do so.
And I gotta say: I don’t ever remember a Sixer shooting quite like VJ does. He’s got the smoothest, most relaxed looking catch-and-shoot motion I’ve seen on this team — to the point where I often worry it’s a little too relaxed, that he’s gonna ease his way into his shot getting swatted into the Schuylkill. But somehow, he always has just enough time to get it off, and get it off clean and unhurried. It’s almost like he does it through sheer force of will, that he shoots so confidently and sweatlessly that no one can possibly touch him.
It’s the same every single time, too. That’s why when it comes to games like Tuesday’s in Memphis, I’d already almost rather he be shooting the open catch-and-shoot potential game-winner than Tyrese, Joel or PG. Those three guys are all capable of clutch moments, but they also get tired, they get frustrated, they get pressured, they get in their heads a little, they get to the point where they can’t quite make their bodies do the things their brains are telling them to do. VJ is always just VJ, and he’ll shoot accordingly. Not to say that he’ll make it every time — before the Memphis game he was just 5 for his last 23 — but he’ll take it the same way, and there’s something extremely reassuring in that. And even if he’d missed it — he didn’t, by the way, he made it, Sixers won, losing streak over, fuck off Cedric Coward — you knew if he’d gotten the opportunity in double OT to take it again, he would, and there’d be a pretty good chance he’d hit it the next time.
Now, it’s hard to know where exactly to cap VJ Edgecombe’s potential in either the short or long term. His stats aren’t jump-off-the-page yet — I wonder if fans of other teams look at the numbers (16-5-4 on 42% shooting) and wonder what the fuck everyone’s getting so excited about this guy for — but he already seems to be pretty good at everything, and the fact that that now includes shooting means there’s practically no ceiling to how big we can dream with him. Could he really be Jimmy, or even Dwyane Wade, but with better range? Could he be that soon? It doesn’t seem impossible. The way we’re starting to talk and feel about Edgecombe reminds me of stuff you’d hear from San Antonio folks about Kawhi Leonard his rookie year, where they would call him the future of the franchise and I would look at his Basketball-Reference or catch a quarter or two of his on League Pass and go Really? Are we sure this guy’s definitely gonna be all that? But he was, and I think VJ will be too.
Maybe he won’t. Maybe he’s thriving in this more limited role, and in a different iteration of the Sixers when he’s asked to do more, he’ll get stretched a little beyond his means. Maybe there’s a rookie wall for him still to hit. Maybe he ends the season shooting 32% from deep after all. But from everything we’ve seen from him — the two Joel-less wins before Christmas, the huge fourth quarter and OT Tuesday in Memphis, now multiple game-winners on his resumé — and the fact that his shot looks real and comfortable and repeatable, the idea of a future where VJ and Tyrese are the co-pilots of the next true Sixers contender suddenly feels shockingly plausible. And if nothing else, I’m definitely excited for VJ now. I’m fucking jazzed, honestly.
Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the ‘If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders’ section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.