The Sixers trimmed their roster down to 16 heading into the preseason opener on Wednesday night against the NBA champion Boston Celtics in Amherst, Mass.
The team waived Strawberry Mansion product Maureece Rice, Andre Emmett and Cory Underwood. That means Temple product Antwyane Robinson has survived the first cuts.
Here is some background on the players who were waived, via a Sixers press release:
Emmett (6-4, 216) was originally selected with the 35th overall pick in the 2004 NBA Draft by Seattle. He appeared in eight games for the Memphis Grizzlies during the 2004-05 season. Last season, Emmett averaged a league-high 23.9 points per game for Belgacom Liege Basket of the Belgian League. He played four seasons for Texas Tech, and finished career as the Red Raiders all-time leader in scoring with 2,256 points.
Rice (6-1, 224) is best known for his career at Strawberry Mansion High School, during which he tallied 2,681 points, surpassing Wilt Chamberlain’s Philadelphia school record of 2,206 points. Rice went on to attend The George Washington University, where he was named Atlantic 10 Sixth Man of the Year as a sophomore and A-10 All-Conference Third Team as a junior. He was not selected in the NBA Draft this past June.
Underwood (6-10, 240) played for the Albuquerque Thunderbirds of the NBA Development League last season. Since finishing his career at Southern University of New Orleans in 2003, he has also played in the ABA (American Basketball Association), the USBL (United States Basketball League), WBA (World Basketball Association), CBA (Continental Basketball Association) as well as leagues in both Brazil and Poland.










Phil Jasner joined the staff of the Daily News in 1972. He has covered the 76ers and the NBA on a full-time basis since 1981. He won the 2004 Curt Gowdy Media Award, presented by the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame for outstanding contributions to the sport during his career; he was a finalist for the award in 2001, when he also received a lifetime achievement award from the Professional Basketball Writers Association during the NBA Finals. He is a past president of the Professional Basketball Writers Association and the Philadelphia College Basketball Writers Association. Along the way, he has covered high school sports, the Big 5, the Eagles and the NFL, the World Football League, the North American Soccer League and what was then the Major Indoor Soccer League. He is a proud graduate of Temple University, and spent his early professional days at the Pottstown (Pa.) Mercury, Montgomery Newspapers (Fort Washington, Pa.), the Norristown (Pa.) Times-Herald and the Trentonian.
John Smallwood has been a sports columnist at the Daily News since September 1995, writing about all facets of the Philadelphia sports scene but not forgetting the rest of the sports world. He has covered numerous NBA Finals and NBA All-Star Games, the 2000 and 2004 Summer Olympics, two Super Bowls, and several Final Fours. A 1987 graduate of the University of Maryland, Smallwood previously worked at the Baltimore Sun, Roanoke Times & World-News (Va.), and Rochester Democrat & Chronicle (N.Y.) before coming to the Daily News in 1994 as the beat writer for Villanova basketball.
