Sixers' Jerami Grant a potential X-factor

IT WAS LONG after the whistle, but Michael Carter-Williams still blocked the shot and smacked Jerami Grant upside the head. No referee intervened.

Grant winced . . . and smiled.

The moment was a metaphor for what Grant's career will most likely be. He will take all sorts of abuse. He often will be ignored. He'll have to grin and bear it.

If the Sixers are lucky, there will be plenty of reason to grin. With the 39th pick in the draft last summer, they might have stolen a finishing piece in their reconstruction.

Grant, 21, is a 6-8 skywalker with the stride of a middle-distance runner who should top out around 240 pounds. Harness him alongside freakish athletes like Nerlens Noel and Joel Embiid and the Sixers could have an unmatched frontcourt for years.

Of course, this all assumes Noel and Embiid remain healthy; each missed their first NBA season with injury. This also assumes Noel and Embiid develop as players; neither played even one full college season.

It assumes Grant stays healthy and develops, too. He weighs 210 pounds, averaged 6.3 points and 3.0 rebounds per game in about 20 minutes per night. An ankle injury cost him the first month of his career and limited him to 65 games.

Still, in those 65 games, Grant showed tantalizing flashes of rare NBA gifts. X factor gifts. The best teams have an X factor.

Established stars with prescribed roles - ostensibly, Embiid, Noel and whoever plays point guard - flourish best with the support of multifaceted teammates. Teams need fourth and fifth players who can play multiple positions; who create mismatches; who can defend power forwards and shooting guards.

Shawn Marion is that sort of player. So, to an extent, were Harvey Grant, Jerami's father, and Horace Grant, his uncle.

Jerami might never average 18 points, like his father did three times. He might never go to an All-Star Game, like his uncle once did. He might never earn a sweet nickname like "The Matrix," as Marion became known for his otherworldly body control.

But he will be bigger than all of them, and he cost so much less. Each of them was a top-12 pick. Grant, taken with the ninth pick of the second round, could become the hallmark pick of the Sam Hinkie era. Since Hinkie, the paranoid general manager, almost never offers player evaluations, Jerami's coach obliged.

"Right now he's a hybrid," Brett Brown said. "If you were to make me guess, you're going to see him playing at some 4 , when he puts on 20, 30 pounds - which his frame is going to support. Look at the width of his shoulders, look at his arms. With his first step, and quickness, he'll have an advantage there."

The road ahead is long.

Grant played little as a freshman and left Syracuse after an unremarkable sophomore season against the advice of coach Jim Boeheim. Sure enough, Grant was projected to be taken in the middle of the first round but fell to the second.

He fell into the perfect situation. The Sixers were a fluid mess all season - they traded their only stable player, Carter-Williams, for a future pick - but Grant was able to find plenty of playing time in the messiness.

Consider his 28 minutes against MCW and the Bucks in the second-to-last game of the season. He scored eight points on 3-for-9 shooting, and missed three of four three-pointers.

On a real team, that gets you benched for a week.

On the Sixers, that's a Monday.

Grant might have had a few rebounds ripped from his spindly hands, but at one point he outran the entire Bucks team, received an outlet pass with his left hand, took one dribble, then one step, glided under the left side of the rim and deftly laid the ball in the basket on the right.

No player on either team had the skill, grace or power to make that play that way.

Brown loves it.

"I see a little bit of arrogance from time to time; a little bit of swagger, from time to time," Brown said. "Because he knows he's going to be a good player, as he starts getting older and adds weight."

That begins today. Really. Grant will waste no time. He often goes for evening jogs, or stretches for hours in front of his television.

He regularly sneaks into the Sixers' practice gym, even after he plays in a game that night. After the Milwaukee game, his name was on the dry-erase board among the players scheduled for a mandatory massage. But he was 3-for-9 and MCW went for 30 points, and the Sixers lost.

"Off the record; I might skip the massage," Grant said.

Carter-Williams was not surprised.

The pair spent a year together at Syracuse before they briefly paired in Philadelphia this season. When Carter-Williams smacked the ball away from Grant (and clipped him in the temple) it was a big brother-little brother thing. Both chuckled at it in the moment.

After the game, Carter-Williams held Grant close and spoke to him at length. They plan to spend 2 weeks together this summer, working out and polishing their games.

"His game has grown a lot," Carter-Williams said. "From the outside shooting, to him attacking, just his IQ of the game has improved.

"Tonight? I was just joking with him. Just get under his skin a little."

If Grant's going to make it as the X factor, that skin needs to thicken pretty fast.