Frazier shows flashes in Sixers audition

Tim Frazier is the kid all the old guys want to play with during the pickup game. Three of every four passes he throws, he bounces. When his teammates are open, the passes often arrive chest high, soft in the hands. When his teammates are getting open - cutting to the basket or spotting up for a jump shot - he rarely throws the passes to where they are, but instead where they will be. He is pretty fast but not flashy, not at all selfish, and embodies the ultimate old-guy basketball compliment: fundamentally sound.

He does all these things, plays this way, because he has to, really. Listed (quite generously) at 6-foot-1 and 170 pounds, he was at least two inches shorter and 20 pounds lighter than any other player at the Wells Fargo Center on Monday, when the 76ers took on the NBA's best team, the Golden State Warriors, and arguably the NBA's best point guard, Stephen Curry. Frazier has been an NBA player for four days and three games, the Sixers' having signed him to a 10-day contract last Thursday after Michael Carter-Williams was sidelined with a toe strain.

After collecting 19 assists through his first two games, Frazier started Monday, played more than 36 minutes, and displayed all the assets and limitations of a player with his skill set, with his NBA career in so precarious a position. He had 10 points, six rebounds, and seven more assists, but he also turned the ball over seven times in the Sixers' 89-84 loss. So if hustling to join the Sixers on short notice in Boston last week from the NBADL's Maine Red Claws presented one kind of challenge for Frazier, it still didn't quite compare to chasing Curry around the court.

"He's a great player," said Frazier, 24, who played at Penn State. "You can't lose sight of him. My job was to try to limit him as much as possible from scoring and getting the other guys involved. Overall, I think I did a good job."

Curry finished with 20 points, missing nine of his 12 three-point attempts, but his off-night appeared more a function of the Warriors' mental and physical fatigue than of anything Frazier and the Sixers did.

Golden State is 41-9 and getting every opponent's best effort every night, and still Curry created plenty of open looks for himself - shots that he usually makes and just didn't Monday night. All the sound fundamentals in the world don't matter when Curry, as he did in the third quarter, catches a pass on the left wing with Frazier in his face, steps behind the three-point arc, juggles the ball for a moment, regains control, and flushes a 23-footer.

"He was fearless," Curry said. "Obviously, he's in a tough situation with the injuries they've had and all the lineups they've had. But his job is to go out there and be aggressive and just have fun on the court, and he did that. I'm sure he'll have a good whatever-how-much-time-they-give-him-here."

Curry's discombobulated turn of phrase was actually a good way to describe what the Sixers, following general manager Sam Hinkie's strategy, have been doing with Frazier and players like him over the last two years. They have had a league-record 13 undrafted players on their roster at one time or another this season. They run them through like an audition episode of American Idol, hoping that for every dozen scratchy-voiced wannabes who end up getting shown the door, they discover a Kelly Clarkson or Jennifer Hudson.

This method of player-evaluation allowed them to see that Robert Covington, who had been a power forward at Tennessee State, had the requisite size (6-9) and shooting ability (39 percent from three-point range) to be a serviceable NBA small forward, if not more than that. And it persuaded them, once Carter-Williams went down, to give a look to Frazier, who was averaging 8.9 assists a game for the Red Claws, the second-best mark in the NBDL.

With no other true point guard on the Sixers' roster, Frazier has logged more than 34 minutes in each of his three games. "I was amazed that he could get through the last game physically, how we had him playing," Sixers coach Brett Brown said. "He was a million miles an hour. He was pressuring a lot of the game, full-court, and he did have some leg cramps - well-deserved leg cramps. But the physical side of it surprised me, that he had the condition base to get through it at that level."

Of course, there's no guarantee that Frazier's stamina will earn him a longer stint with the Sixers, not with the way Hinkie does things. "You just go and play your game," Frazier said, and try not to think about the future. It's a game a lot of old guys would appreciate, but Sam Hinkie is only 37.

@MikeSielski