It was a big year for 23-year-old Dominick Barlow.
The forward joined the Philadelphia 76ers last summer, prior to the 2025-26 season, on a two-way contract. Back then, no one – likely not even Barlow himself – knew just how integral he would become in the Sixers’ rotation throughout the season.
And he was thrown right in at the deep end. With Paul George not yet ready to play at the start of the regular season, Barlow ended up starting at the four for the Sixers’ opener against the Boston Celtics
at TD Garden. You may remember that night more for VJ Edgecombe’s 34-point NBA debut in the Sixers 117-116 win, and that would be very fair, but Barlow had himself a decent night too. The 6-foot-10 big immediately showed promise in a number of areas the Sixers desperately needed a boost in, especially his offensive rebounding – he had five in that first game, and he was often able to turn them into assists. More on that later.
Barlow ended up playing in 71 contests for the Sixers this season, starting a whopping 59 of them. In 23.8 minutes per night, he averaged 7.7 points on 53.4% field goal shooting with 4.8 rebounds (1.9 offensive) and 1.2 assists.
As is often the case, the stats only tell part of the story for Barlow. These numbers alone might not sound impressive or promising, but the ways he gets them are. Barlow is aggressive and athletic with size and basketball intuition on his side. Not only would he be willing and able to grab desperately-needed offensive boards for Philadelphia, but his situational awareness meant he was often able to quickly turn a pass out from the rebounds into an assist to a teammate. Not only that, but Barlow was a decent defender throughout, able to keep up with switches while using his size and athleticism to put up some big blocks along the way.
Barlow’s best performance of the season came on February 2, when he posted a career-high 26 points in a Sixers’ win over the Los Angeles Clippers. He shot 10-for-16 from the floor and grabbed 16 rebounds for the double-double, with 10 of those rebounds coming on the offensive end. He also had two assists, two steals and one block in that contest.
Just a few days later, all of his hard work paid off. Barlow was converted to a standard contract with the Sixers for 2 years, $6.8 million, a significant raise for the young big. In 2026-27, he’ll be playing to try to earn another contract at the NBA level.
The biggest problem facing Barlow going forward is that he basically does not shoot the ball. He was excellent off the ball, often making the correct cuts at precisely the right times to receive the ball right at the rim to lay (or slam) in… but he really didn’t score otherwise. This season, Barlow had 336 two-point field goal attempts – 208 of those were at the rim. That was probably a smart move from Barlow, as he shot significantly worse once he was out of the restricted area. He went 155-for-208 (74.5%) at the rim this season, compared to 51-for-128 (38.9%) from everywhere else within the arc.
Barlow did try to shoot from long range here and there, notching 85 three-point attempts this season, but sank just 24.7%.
This meant that, other than watching out for him to make a basket cut, opposing defenses were able to basically ignore Barlow. This problem’s effect was exacerbated by the fact that Barlow was far from the only non-shooter in the Sixers roster this year. Even if that wasn’t the case though, his lack of direct offensive impact is the biggest issue with Barlow’s play.
So, all in all, the good news is that Barlow has shown a lot of potential in many areas of his game already at a young age. The bad news is that, especially now that he has earned the standard contract, Barlow is going to have to develop at least a passable jump shot and start making a bigger offensive impact if he wants to succeed further in the league…
Especially on a team like the Sixers that so often has to rely on its back-up bigs.
