VJ Edgecombe’s Bahamian friends reveling in his stellar NBA debut: ‘It was so personal, and it was amazing’

Gilbert Rolle Jr. and his youth basketball team gathered in Freeport, the Bahamas, on Wednesday, the night before traveling to the nearby Abaco Islands for a tournament.

They were all locked in on a front-room television showing the 76ers’ season opener at the Boston Celtics, where one of their own was making his much-anticipated NBA debut.

It felt like a full-circle moment for Rolle, because the last time he traveled to this tournament, a seventh-grade VJ Edgecombe was with him. Now, there were outbursts of cheers whenever Edgecombe scored for the Sixers, making it feel like “every shot was a 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 … moment,” Rolle said.

Edgecombe’s historic NBA debut — his 34 points were the most in a Sixers rookie’s first game in franchise history, and the most scored in any NBA debut since Wilt Chamberlain’s 43 with the Philadelphia Warriors in 1959 — dazzled those who follow the sport.

But for those with roots on the tiny island of Bimini, who watched Edgecombe grow into this player and man, the pride cannot be overstated.

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“It was like, ‘Wow, it was just so inspiring,’” said Rolle, a coach and principal at Gateway Christian Academy. “Because this isn’t somebody we just know. This is somebody who sat in our schools, that we watched him play in the park, walked through the community. We know, know, know, know him. …

“It was so personal, and it was amazing.”

When asked how Edgecombe was ready to make such an instant impact at basketball’s highest level, Rolle and others reached by The Inquirer by phone pointed to the 20-year-old’s maturity and confidence. Those qualities were shaped by Edgecombe’s childhood circumstances, when his family spent time living with a generator for power in their home. And on the basketball court, he played against older kids.

In every way, Rolle said, Edgecombe was “always a notch above his age.”

Leano Rolle saw this in Edgecombe from the beginning. They are such close friends that they consider themselves cousins or brothers. As kids, they started playing basketball together barefoot on a neighborhood dirt lot, with a makeshift hoop made of a crate and two-by-fours.

When Edgecombe went through his pre-draft process earlier this year, Leano Rolle was still by his side. The night before Edgecombe was selected third overall by the Sixers, tears of disbelief and joy fell from the corners of Leano Rolle’s eyes as he stared at the ceiling while lying in a New York City bed.

“I texted [Edgecombe] and told him how proud of him I was,” Leano Rolle said. “It was so amazing because, where we’re from, you wouldn’t expect nothing to happen like that.”

But the younger Rolle is chasing his own basketball dreams at Southwest Mississippi Community College, and Wednesday’s practice overlapped with the start of the Sixers-Celtics game.

When a team manager alerted Rolle that Edgecombe had 14 first-quarter points, he was in shock. He kept checking his phone for box scores and Instagram dunk highlights as he moved from practice to a mandatory pep rally, convinced that Edgecombe was about to get 50 points.

When Rolle finally returned to his room, Edgecombe called him and their other best friend for a postgame chat.

“Just talking and laughing and telling him how he did,” Rolle said. “Letting him know he went out there and did well, and did what he was supposed to do.”

Also watching that night was LJ Rose, the general manager of the Bahamian national team. He did not realize that Edgecombe took 25 shots against the Celtics, because “he was just flowing.”

Rose, who is also the general manager of the University of Miami’s men’s basketball team, remembers first learning about Edgecombe from a local media member named John Nutt. Nutt persuaded Buddy Hield, the fellow NBA Bahamian and former Sixer, to invite a young Edgecombe to his basketball camp.

“He held his own,” Rose said of Edgecombe. “And ever since then, he’s kind of been on the radar.”

That buzz only grew when Edgecombe joined the senior national team for an Olympic qualifying tournament last summer. He played alongside NBA players Hield, current Sixer Eric Gordon, and Deandre Ayton, the first time Edgecombe had been surrounded by teammates with more credentials and experience.

Still, Edgecombe “showed up Day 1 and he asserted himself,” Rose said, a testament to Edgecombe’s “everyday” work ethic and temperament. Rose went back to the Houston Rockets, where he was an international scout at the time, and told general manager Rafael Stone, “Hey, we have one.”

“He did not get rattled when he got overseas,” Rose said. “And it was a new environment. Some adversity was coming, but he just kind of kept on plugging away. And I think that just goes back to, it’s the everyday. His consistent grind and just coming from where he’s come from.”

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Even during this dramatic life transition to the NBA, Edgecombe has remained connected to those Bimini roots.

Leano Rolle is planning to visit Edgecombe in Philly for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Gilbert Rolle texts Edgecombe at least once per week and said any impromptu phone call would be answered with a, “Hey, what’s up?”

When asked late Saturday — after totaling 15 points, eight assists, and six rebounds in the Sixers’ comeback win over the Charlotte Hornets — about the support he has felt from back home in recent days, a grinning Edgecombe said, “Yeah … I’ve heard from a lot of people.”

Because Edgecombe is still the “humble spirit” that Gilbert Rolle watched cry “as if somebody died” after losing in that Abaco Islands tournament as a seventh grader. To Rolle, that visceral reaction cemented how seriously Edgecombe took the sport.

“He’s not only talented, but he worked for this and he wanted this,” Rolle said. “This was something that he put his mind to do. And every opportunity he had, he went and got up extra shots. Any opportunity he had to get better in his game.

“To see him crying from losing a game, to on TV playing and breaking records, I’m like, ‘He deserves this.’”

And now, Gilbert Rolle has direct evidence of Edgecombe’s hard work to pass along to his current crop of young players. That is one component of the Edgecombe chatter that spread throughout the Bahamas into the weekend, as those close to the rookie revel in his instant success.

And if Edgecombe continues this torrid start to his NBA career?

“The people back home are ready to name the island after him one day,” Leano Rolle said. “That’s VJ Island.”