Trendon Watford watched with a mixture of frustration, excitement and anxiety.
For the entirety of Philadelphia 76ers training camp and preseason, and for the early part of the regular schedule, the booming and assertive voice with the point-guard handles was out, dealing with a hamstring injury. He couldn’t practice. He couldn’t scrimmage. He couldn’t play in the games. Often, before games, he would sit at his locker, scrolling through his phone, waiting for his time to come.
He was like the student who couldn’t participate in the test.
“I hope it’s something that I don’t have to deal with going forward,” Watford said. “Hamstrings are difficult because you can’t do anything when you have that injury. All you can do is kind of sit around and get out of shape.”
He’s back with the 76ers after missing the team’s first three regular-season games, and the 24-year-old is now facing, in many ways, his biggest test. He’s on a two-year deal with the Sixers with a lot to prove. He’s never had a long-term contract and the promise of being in the league that comes with it. It doesn’t come for many.
Watford has never experienced NBA comfort. He fought and hustled and scrapped to break into an NBA rotation with the Portland Trail Blazers, and he had to do it on a two-way contract after being undrafted from LSU. He clawed his way into an every-night role with the Brooklyn Nets by last season, albeit for the 44 games that he was healthy. However, while he averaged 20 minutes a night, he did so for a Nets team that wanted to lose.
But the NBA thrives on the unique. It thrives on different, particularly at the role-player level. If you bring something unique to the proverbial table, you get chances, as he did when he signed with the Sixers on a two-year deal in late June.
If you want to know how Watford handles the ball the way he does, look no further than his upbringing. It was a mixture of his father’s vision, his older brother, Christian, making it at the highest level of Division I basketball at Indiana, and the younger sibling absorbing and watching it all.
Trendon was the tallest and biggest kid at every step of his childhood basketball journey. Most youth basketball coaches would have stuck him near the basket. The team with the biggest kid usually wins a lot of games. Watford’s father, Ernest, who was his coach, instead chose to put Trendon on the perimeter. He saw how the game was trending and put Trendon through thousands upon thousands of repetitive ballhandling drills.
“My father made sure that I had a lot of versatility in my game,” Watford said. “I’ve never been small. I’ve always been the biggest in my class. He was my coach growing up, and he never put me in the post. He also never let anyone else put me in the post. He saw the big picture of what he thought I could become, and it’s paid off to this day.”
When you look at Watford’s performance on the Sixers’ recent road trip, which yielded a win over Brooklyn and losses to the Chicago Bulls and Cleveland Cavaliers, you can see his ability to grab a rebound at 6 foot 9 and push the ball up the floor. You can see his ability to take a mismatch into the post and bully ball his way into buckets. You can see the passing acumen and the ability to play multiple positions on the floor.
this sequence from Trendon Watford >>> pic.twitter.com/I4SrD8kD7r
— Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) November 3, 2025
He’s a connector, which every NBA team needs, and a role that’s significantly underrated to the naked eye. He has a toughness about him that gives a glimpse of what he went through in his younger days, when he and his brother would go at it in heated backyard games.
On a team that has the star power of Joel Embiid, Paul George and Tyrese Maxey, the role players are going to have a real say at determining the staying power of a 5-3 start to the season. A team can never have enough guys who can handle and pass-and-shoot the basketball.
Watford is someone who can do two of the three with aplomb, and he’s improving at shooting. It’s one of the reasons the Sixers looked forward to adding Watford to the roster when they signed him in free agency this offseason.
“He’s obviously shown quite a bit,” Sixers head coach Nick Nurse said. “He’s been helping us with our primary ballhandling and our overall execution and scoring in a variety of ways. I think he’s still got room to improve in his rhythm and conditioning, and hopefully he will continue to do that when as he gets some more games under his belt.
“He slots nicely into a role with us, and that’s what we were hoping for when we got him.”
Watford has been an assertive presence in the Sixers’ recent road trip, even vocally. When Maxey started slowly in Wednesday night’s loss to the Cavaliers, it was Watford who took him aside.
“Where are you?” Watford asked. “You’re still in Chicago (the Sixers played the Bulls the night before). I need you in Cleveland.”
Maxey snapped out of it and started cooking.
On Wednesday night, Watford played 23 minutes, scoring 16 points and handing out six assists. He’s making a case for more minutes and deserves to be in the rotation even when the Sixers get fully healthy. His NBA race has been one toward finding a home. In many cases, the most versatile one wins the race.
“I’ve always been a vocal guy,” Watford said. “I know that I have to use my voice and use my energy to try and give a spark to this team off the bench. Being a backup, it’s my job to come in and pick up the energy of the team.”
