(Courtesy: Memphis)

The Sixers signed 21-year-old swingman Adonis Thomas to a 10-day contract, the team announced.

The contract of James Nunnally, who had exhausted his share of 10-day deals, had expired Saturday night, leaving the Sixers’ roster with a vacancy.

The 6-7, 240-pounder spent most of his season with the D-League’s Springfield Armor. Sandwiched between D-League stints was a four-game stint Thomas played in Orlando on a pair of 10-day deals, the last of which expired March 14. While with the Magic, Thomas averaged 1.8 points, 0.8 rebounds and 0.5 assists.

Thomas went undrafted last summer out of Memphis, where he played two seasons.

Friday’s game at Memphis should feel like a homecoming for Thomas, who was born there. Thomas is the Sixers’ fourth player with Memphis roots. Thaddeus Young, Elliot Williams and Arnett Moultrie all went to high school in the Tennessee town.

Thomas will be the eighth rookie and the 23^rd player overall to have appeared in uniform this season for the Sixers, and the 28^th to occupy a spot on their 15-man roster.

(AP)

BOSTON – Maybe the 76ers circulated a memo throughout the locker room. Maybe they convened before Friday’s game, a 111-102 win over the Boston Celtics, and agreed upon a singular word to best describe Henry Sims.

“Aggressive,” Sixers coach Brett Brown said, carefully selecting the identical adjective that two others in the locker room had used in regard to Sims.

The Sixers big man scored a career-high 24 points and added nine rebounds in the team’s victory, their second in four games. Tonight, against visiting Brooklyn, they’ll go for their first winning streak since claiming four straight from Dec. 29 through Jan. 4.

The most-telling stat for Sims, beyond his point total, were his attempts from the foul line. The 6-10, 248-pounder went 14-for-18 at the foul line, including a 6-for-6 effort in the fourth quarter.

“He was in a bull mode, a really aggressive attack mode,” Brown said of Sims, who came to the Sixers as part of the trade-deadline deal that cast off Spencer Hawes. “He’d bury his head and try to get to the rim at all costs. In the first half, I thought he’d rush things when he was at a block. When he turns and faces things, he can catch and go, and play out of a dribble-handoff game at the top of the key area. He has a surprising first step and a fantastic mentality. With that it produced an aggression attack.”

Sims has been on a roll of late. He’s had a double-figure scoring total in seven of his last eight games, during which he’s also had two 20-point games. He’s also been a 77.3-percent shooter from the free-throw line. Not bad for a guy who shot 57.1 percent while with Cleveland.

When asked whether he’d ever had 18 attempts from the foul line in a single game at any level, Sims said no. (“If I did, I’d have had 40 (points),” he said.)

“Better opportunity here. More shots going up, more opportunities to get to the line,” Sims said. “I feel like I’m playing my game and Coach notices it. I’m still coming in every day, defensively and rebounding. Those are the two big things for me. Everything else is just extra.”

Thaddeus Young is seeing what Sims is doing.

“Very aggressive,” Young said, electing to use the operative word. “He went out there and played really, really aggressive. That’s the Henry I like to see all the time. When he’s aggressive, he’s always in attack mode. I encourage him all of the time to just continue to stay aggressive and be confident within yourself.”

Another standout from the win over the Celtics was Elliot Williams.

The reserve guard scored 15 points on 5-for-7 shooting overall and a 2-for-3 effort from 3-point range in 26 minutes. In his last 10 outings, Williams has shined. He’s averaged 8.4 points in 21.1 minutes per game, while shooting .484 from the field. Then compare those numbers against his season totals: 61 appearances, 5.6 points, 16.5 minutes, .396 field-goal percentage.

(AP)

Never in his career has Thaddeus Young attempted and made more 3-pointers in a single season – and he’d like to keep it that way.

While dealing with so much change – like five coaches in his seven pro seasons – Young would like one thing to stay the same. Namely, he’d appreciate Sixers coach Brett Brown continuing to give him the freedom to roam near the 3-point line.

“I think I was capable of it before,” Young said after Tuesday’s practice. “It was just one of those things where I’ve always been a player where, when a coach needs something or asks me to do something, I go out there and do it. I fulfill a job. 

“With Coach (Doug) Collins, he didn’t want me shooting a lot of 3s. He wanted me in the paint, getting extra possessions, hustling, make open shots. He told me actually, ‘Treat the 3-point line like a barbed-wire fence.’ I didn’t like that at all, but I went out there and fulfilled the job. This year, Brett said to me he wanted me to step out and shoot 3s, to put the ball on the floor, get to the basket, and do everything. I was like, ‘Perfect. I can get back to playing how I was before Coach Collins, before Eddie Jordan.’ My first two years in the league were free-flowing.”

Young is shooting 32.1 percent (83-for-258) from beyond the arc, with his makes and attempts from the 3-point line representing career-high figures. In the three seasons prior, under Collins, Young collectively shot 8-for-34 from the arc.

In his second and third seasons, Young had shown an ability to take and make shots from long range, before having to reel it in under Collins. During the 2008-09 season, with Maurice Cheeks and Tony DiLeo splitting the season, Young shot 56-for-164. A season later, under Jordan, Young went 48-for-138 from the 3-point line.

(AP)

Indiana’s Roy Hibbert doesn’t think the 76ers’ rebuild will begin until Nerlens Noel takes the floor.

The rookie center, Noel has not played this season while recovering from surgery to repair a torn ACL in his left knee. While Sixers coach Brett Brown often extols the positives of Noel’s season, which has included traveling with his teammates and being a visible member of the team for practices and shootarounds, Hibbert said Noel will have be present in the games for the Sixers’ rebuild to take hold.

“Something’s off,” Hibbert said last week, when the Pacers were in town to face the Sixers. “They have the pieces once Nerlens is back. Michael Carter-Williams is a terrific player. Thaddeus Young has been terrific for years. They’ll be set up for the future once they get their core guys on the court and build chemistry, and go through it.”

Hibbert referenced a game this season as an example of such chemistry. He and the Pacers trailed New Orleans by as many as 16 points in the second half, and were down by five with less than two minutes to play in an Oct. 31 game. Indiana rallied to beat the Pelicans, 95-90.

“With this team, in our second game of the season, down (16) at New Orleans on the road, we fought back,” Hibbert said. “Those are the types of things (the Sixers) are going to have to experience. Once they get those core guys together, they might lose that game but it’s an experience they need to get. They have to try to rally amongst each other and fight through that and build a bond through that. They don’t have that right now, only because they don’t have everybody out there right now.”

The Sixers (15-51) visit the Pacers tonight, looking to snap a franchise-record-tying 20-game losing streak.

(Associated Press)

The trade deadline is here.

The 76ers have until 3 p.m. this afternoon to decide whether to cut ties with free-agents-to-be Evan Turner and Spencer Hawes, sell off Thaddeus Young and his one remaining year under contract plus a player option, or any conceivable configuration of the two. (The latest, it would seem, is an ESPN report that the Cavaliers are eying Hawes.)

What does Sixers coach Brett Brown think is going to happen?

“What I expect is nothing,” he said. “Every one of my years, this stuff has surfaced – and it’s to a greater level here – but it surfaces with San Antonio. We were very clandestine. We flew under the radar better than most. It inevitably, through the media, surfaces. It’s part of pro sport.

“I expect to wake up and coach the team I had the previous day. I think the stats and the facts confirm that opinion. Most times, this period of time is highly overblown.”

Brown’s involvement in roster moves for the Sixers is somewhat hands-off, he said at Wednesday’s practice. He said he leaves those goings-on to general manager Sam Hinkie. The two, Brown said, have a regular running dialogue, but the first-year coach said he and the Sixers’ ownership group trust Hinkie, the first-year GM.

“We talk all the time and, at the end of the day, I really trust Sam Hinkie’s judgment and I leave it with Sam,” Brown said. “My experience over the years is that not a lot happens. This is going to be left with Sam’s better judgment. This is why the club hired him. This is his strength. It doesn’t diminish communication at all.

“I’m in this for the long haul, and this is the first wave of a very long process. I coach this team, I enjoy coaching this team, I’m doing my very best to coach this team and we got up this morning, had a great, spirited session and life moves on.”