(AP)

Nerlens Noel has graduated in his rehabilitation. The 76ers rookie has “cautiously” begun working against another body, going through 1-on-1 work, according to coach Brett Brown.

Noel has been seen in the gym at PCOM wearing the Sixers’ full practice gear, as opposed to the form-fitting undershirts he had been sporting. The 19-year-old also has been present on the court when the Sixers’ practices are opened to media members. Previously, he had joined his teammates only after they’d concluded their day’s work.

“He is (doing more). He’s slowly doing a little more physical stuff,” Brown said after Friday’s practice. “He’s slowly doing a little more and you can play him against another body. I highlight the word ‘slowly’ and I highlight the word ‘cautiously,’ but he’s doing it.

“A little bit more. I don’t want to paint the wrong picture. A little bit more, but he’s moving in that direction.”

In the portions of practice that are visible to reporters, Noel had only been seen gingerly working with Sixers assistant Greg Foster in 1-on-1 drills. It sounds as though Noel, the 6-11 center, is now able to go against a teammate with slightly more resistance.

The one constant, however, is that there’s no rush to have Noel play this season.

The sixth overall pick in last summer’s draft, Noel has yet to make his NBA debut. It’s been nearly 13 months since the Kentucky product tore the ACL in his left knee, and nearly a year since undergoing surgery to repair it. There’s no urgency on the Sixers’ part to get Noel on the floor, as they continue their rebuild effort and take a 15-game losing streak into Saturday’s game against visiting Utah.

“Whether we ever get to see him in a game this year, it really is, ‘Who knows?’” Brown said. “I’ve gone on (the) record to say I wish I could coach him and get some games under our belt with him. But the boxes he has to tick, the ones we’ve always talked about, those have yet to be ticked.”

Giving a sneak-peek into the kind of player into which the Sixers are hoping to mold Noel, Brown said he thinks Noel will be a drastically improved free-throw shooter. Noel converted only 55 of his 104 attempts at the foul line during his one injury-shortened year at Kentucky. Brown suspects that Noel will be hitting in the low 60-percent range next season and eventually shoot in the mid-70-percent territory for his NBA career.

(Christopher A. Vito)

The 76ers’ Nerlens Noel put on quite a display after Thursday’s practice.

The rookie center worked out with assistant coach Greg Foster, in front of reporters for nearly a half hour. He dunked and took hook shots with both his left and right hands, took passes from assistant Billy Lange and backed down Foster, tossed in a few spin moves and practiced his free throw form.

Enough for fans to get excited over? Not so fast, said Sixers coach Brett Brown. Noel, who has yet to play this season while continuing rehab from a February 2013 knee surgery, isn’t close to a return. His next step is 5-on-0 scripting, in which he can make sharper cuts and graduate to a workout beyond “shadow-boxing,” as Brown called it.

“The message is two-fold: Yep, you’d be as excited as I am to project out what could be in Nerlens Noel. But don’t get tricked,” Brown said. “There’s a long ways to go. When it happens is anybody’s guess right now. Those are the two messages.”

Check out the videos below and pick up Friday’s Daily Times for more on Noel.

(Times staff / ERIC HARTLINE)

76ers coach Brett Brown said rookie center Nerlens Noel’s shot is “a total rebuild,” something Brown and his coaching staff will address throughout the season.

Brown made that assessment at PCOM Tuesday, following his team’s practice.

“You bucket him up into, ‘Is it a total rebuild?’ and I think Nerlens is a total rebuild,” Brown said. “You do stuff with Evan (Turner)’s footwork, which we’ve done. You do stuff with release points or you exaggerate follow-throughs with Tony Wroten, because everything is a hot stove. Everything is tweakable. I think Nerlens’ is a total rebuild.”

Noel, the sixth overall pick in the 2013 draft, has been seen at Sixers practices working on one-handed shot attempts inside 10 feet. Brown said Noel’s guide hand “sends (the ball) all over the place,” but when the 6-11, 230-pounder uses one hand “he gets the elbow under it and he gets a good-looking shot.”

“He’s wide-eyed and open,” Brown said of Noel, who is working closely with Sixers assistant Greg Foster. “He’s a willing learner because he knows. He’s looking for advice and he’s looking for someone to help him. That’s my job. I’ll be really disappointed if, in April, if we don’t look back and say we made good ground. We helped his shot. It is really hard to change stuff a lot. I think the basic areas we’re looking at are changeable and we’re working with him.”

Other notes from Sixers practice:

• Sixth man Tony Wroten is averaging 12.3 points per game. The rest of the bench is scoring 15.7 points. That 28 points-per-game average is 10^th-worst in the league. Brown said he needs more from his reserves: “It’s in them. There’s no doubt it’s in them. They have a long way to go, and they’ll get there, but it’ll be in time.”
• For the second time in six days, the Sixers will play the Washington Wizards. Said Spencer Hawes, of the Sixers’ opponent Wednesday: “It seems like we always play the Wizards a bunch of times in the preseason or the beginning of the year. It’s kind of nothing new.”

(AP)

76ers coach Brett Brown has indicated that it might be a longshot for rookie center Nerlens Noel to make it onto the floor this season.

Brown made that statement Monday night in Columbus, Ohio, before the Sixers played the host Cleveland Cavaliers in a preseason game on the campus of Ohio State University.

“I doubt, everybody doubts (Noel) is going to play this year,” Brown told reporters Monday.

Brown went on to say that Noel has shown improvement in his rehab, but added that progress been “slow.”

This is the first instance that Brown has ever hinted of Noel’s injury causing him to miss his entire rookie season. Noel has been traveling with the Sixers while rehabbing a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee, an injury he sustained last February in a game at Kentucky, where he played one season.

The Sixers had intimated all along that Noel’s debut with the team seemed most likely in 2014, possibly as early as January, but had never assigned a timetable for the 6-11, 230-pound center. 

If anything, the Sixers’ decision to preserve Noel until he’s fully healed shouldn’t be viewed as a setback.  It was always assumed that the Sixers, who are in a rebuilding phase with a new coach, a new general manager and plenty of new faces on the roster, felt no rush in grooming Noel for on-court time in the regular season.

Still, Noel has looked strong and assertive on his feet following recent practices, working almost exclusively with assistant coach Greg Foster. In the post-practice shooting sessions, he’s taken low-post jumpers, field goals in the lane and worked on his free-throw shooting with Foster.

The Sixers traded for Noel on the night of the NBA draft, sending All-Star point guard Jrue Holiday to New Orleans in exchange for the draft rights for the 19-year-old Noel, taken sixth overall by the Pelicans, and a 2014 lottery-protected, first-round pick.

Last month at the team’s media day proceedings, Noel categorized the status of his knee as “improving.” He had said he expected to play this season. In the interim, Noel said he was using his rehab time as a means of better getting to know his new teammates and learning the ropes of the NBA.

“I prepared myself. I’m staying focused with everything,” Noel said at the time. “Although I won’t be playing (in the preseason), I’m a student of the game and I’m seeing how certain players play and their tendencies. I’m doing the job. Even though I’m not playing, I’m learning.”

Should Noel miss the 2013-14 season, he would represent the second big man in two years to have sat out an entire season with the Sixers. Andrew Bynum, the 7-footer acquired by trade in the 2012 offseason, did not play a single game while battling recurring knee injuries. Bynum this summer signed a two-year contract with Cleveland, the Sixers’ opponent Monday, but he’s yet to debut for the Cavaliers.

(AP)

The 76ers have yet to announce – by way of an official press release – the members of coach Brett Brown’s staff, even though Lloyd Pierce, Chad Iske, Billy Lange, Greg Foster and Curtis Sumpter have been visible figures ever since training camp.

So when a reporter asked Brown after Thursday’s practice for the identity of the guy under the far basket, wearing a Sixers T-shirt, working with Spencer Hawes, it was somewhat surprising that Brown revealed who he was.

“That’s Vance Walberg,” Brown said.

Walberg, who most recently was on George Karl’s staff last season with the Denver Nuggets, is regarded for developing the dribble-drive motion offense. A California-based high school coach from 1978-2002, Walberg was the head coach at Fresno City College from 2002-2006 and Pepperdine from 2006-08, worked as an assistant at UMass from 2008-11 before joining the Nuggets last year.

“If you looked on Google, you would see Sports Illustrated articles and other articles on him,” Brown said of Walberg. “He’s very renowned and researched in the dribble-drive game. That’s his claim to fame. Many articles declared him to be one of the most innovative coaches in all of basketball. Coach (John) Calipari has implemented his system at Kentucky. For me, I’m interested in that attack game, that drive-and-dish game, that proactive game. The combination of that and pick-and-roll is the future of the game, and I want to learn more. So he’s been with us and he’s been fantastic."

One of these days, the Sixers will unveil who is serving on Brown's bench. It's yet to be determined if Walberg is one of them.