The 76ers have gone all-in for a crack at an NBA championship with the additions of LeBron James and Jaylen Brown, but young starter VJ Edgecombe admittedly has a bigger basketball goal.
Edgecombe, who played his high school ball at Long Island Lutheran, admitted it would be more meaningful to him to play for The Bahamas in the Olympics than it would be to win an NBA ring.
“That’ll be a headline. Don’t care, though,” Edgecombe said Friday during an appearance on Brown’s Twitch stream podcast. “It might sound crazy, but I would rather do that than win the championship.
“For the USA, y’all win all the time. But for my country, that’s probably one of the best things in the world.”
The Bahamian national team has never appeared in the Summer Olympics, with the 21-year-old Edgecombe acknowledging it’s “a small country…not known for basketball.”
The Bahamas nearly qualified for the 2024 Olympics in Paris, going 4-0 in pre-qualifying before losing in the FIBA tournament to Spain. Edgecombe, at 18, played on that team alongside NBA players such as Eric Gordon, Deandre Ayton and Buddy Hield.
Edgecombe, an All-Rookie selection last season for the Sixers, also told Brown that playing in the Olympics would be meaningful “more so for the community and for the country.”
“It’ll bring more attention for other kids in that position. Now everyone is starting to look into The Bahamas and at least kind of notice them,” Edgecombe said. “I’ve been to all these different camps, and I wasn’t noticed early. So I think that would help show that we got a little [talent].”
The 6-foot-4 Edgecombe, who moved to the United States in the ninth grade, was the third overall pick by Philadelphia in the 2025 NBA Draft out of Baylor.
He averaged 16 points, 5.6 rebounds and 4.2 assists while shooting 35.4 percent from 3-point range over 75 games (all starts) in his debut season to finish third behind Cooper Flagg and Kon Knueppel in Rookie of the Year voting.
