Guerschon Yabusele thriving in NBA return, aided by countryman Nic Batum: ‘He earned a chance to be back in the league’

LOS ANGELES, CA — Guerschon Yabusele was closing in on an opportunity five years in the making, but he had to ask one more person for their approval.

“I was like, ‘You’re going to love it,'” said Nic Batum, who spent much of the 2023-24 NBA season with the Sixers before co-starring with Yabusele during Team France’s deep run in the 2024 Olympics. “Coach is great, fans are great, he’s great, great team as well.”

Yabusele made waves for his famous poster dunk over LeBron James, but he is far more than the beneficiary of one highlight. Batum said before Wednesday’s Sixers-Clippers game that Yabusele was Team France’s best player, and reiterated that he kept reminding the former first-round pick that his rightful return to the NBA would come eventually.

“He’s a great individual,” Yabusele said of Batum in an exclusive interview with PhillyVoice on Friday. “He’s just a great dude. Somebody that you can talk to about anything in general: basketball or life. He has been so important for us young guys coming into the national team, to be able to have somebody that always makes it easy for us.” 

Batum said he continued to remind Yabusele that he belongs in the NBA and that his opportunity would soon come. 

Little did Batum know that said chance would come from the team Batum had just departed. Batum, who explained that his decision to leave the Sixers and return to Los Angeles was driven by a family-oriented mindset, had nothing but good things to say when Yabusele asked him about the opportunity.

“He was telling me all of the great things about Philly,” Yabusele said. “The guys, the coach and everything.”

MORE: Batum explains decision to leave Sixers, return to Clippers

Now, after a half-decade of wondering if another chance to contribute in the NBA would ever come, Yabusele is immediately serving as a rotation regular for Sixers head coach Nick Nurse. But the role is likely not what he expected: Yabusele has been the Sixers’ backup center in the absence of Joel Embiid, playing very few minutes at his natural power forward position on the young season.

“He’s probably exceeded what we thought we were [getting],” Nurse after the team’s practice at UCLA on Thursday. “He’s solid every night, very good some nights.”

Yabusele is very much undersized relative to the average center he is matched up with on a given night, but he makes up for the deficit he often faces in terms of frame with a motor that is truly unrelenting. Even more importantly, he has forced larger centers without much mobility into precarious situations as defenders: perhaps the most drastic change that Yabusele has made between his NBA exit and return is the reworking of his jumper. He has already proven to be a legitimate floor-spacer, a massive shift from the player he was during his two-year stint with the Boston Celtics. 

Across his pair of NBA seasons with Boston in 2018 and 2019 before heading overseas, Yabusele averaged 10.5 made threes and 32.5 three-point attempts per season, shooting a combined 32.3 percent from beyond the arc. In his first eight games as a Sixer, he has made 14 long-range tries on 33 total attempts — good for a 42.4 three-point percentage. The difference is night and day.

The feeling of spending years working on something and having it play a critical role in returning to the NBA — and immediately using it to thrive at that level — is rewarding, Yabusele said. But it also might be intoxicating.

“It makes me feel like I want to do more,” Yabusele said. “It’s something that I really worked on, so to be able to knock down the shots feels good.”

As Nurse said, Yabusele has shown out and exceeded expectations across the board. That has not just stemmed from his remarkable motor, but also a strong feel for the game. Yabusele has utilized impressive passing chops, which will continue to come in handy for a team built around stars who draw multiple defenders regularly.

In Yabusele’s few meetings with the media before the start of the season, the 28-year-old’s pure bliss was palpable. It appeared as if it had not yet sunk in that he had achieved his dream of playing in the NBA once again. Has it sunk it now?

“Yeah, pretty much. The team is doing a great job of putting me really into the game. I’m still learning,” Yabusele said. “But it’s been pretty good so far.”

Twice a year, they will be foes. But for 80 other games, Yabusele will have Batum in his corner.

“I’m happy for him,” Batum said. “He deserved it. He deserved a second chance in this league. He’s showing it right now: he belongs in this league.

“He earned a chance to be back in the league. I think he’s going to take advantage of it.”

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