September 14, 2026
Erik Williams/IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
Dominick Barlow has spent the summer reworking his shooting mechanics.
Welcome to PhillyVoice's series of Sixers player previews ahead of the 2026-27 season.
After two years of volatility, Sixers fans entered this offseason teetering on apathy. Then came new Sixers President of Basketball Operations Mike Gansey, the architect of what became a dream summer. Gansey traded Paul George away, landing five-time All-Star Jaylen Brown from the Boston Celtics. As Gansey accumulated depth around Brown, Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe, the door opened for an unfathomable addition.
LeBron James is a member of the Sixers, rounding out one of the most talented starting lineups in recent NBA history. And suddenly, the Sixers have cultivated more local and national interest than ever before. Games are not won on paper, but the Sixers are built to be full-blown championship contenders for however long James remains in Philadelphia.
As Sixers Media Day on Sept. 28 nears, our player preview series will focus on two key questions surrounding each member of the team's 14-player standard roster.
Up next: Dominick Barlow, whose rise from two-way contract signee to full-time starter was one of the most encouraging stories of the 2025-26 Sixers season. Barlow made a major two-way impact thanks to his rapport with Embiid, timely cutting, prowess as an offensive rebounder and versatility as a defender. Can Barlow remain a rotation-caliber big for the Sixers? What does he need to do to avoid losing out on a key bench role?
SIXERS PLAYER PREVIEWS
Joel Embiid | Labaron Philon Jr. | Dean Wade | Dominick Barlow
Barlow, 23, has an incredible blend of size, length and athleticism. But what enabled his ascent last season was his self-awareness. Barlow has no illusions of grandeur about how he can best impact winning at the NBA level. He mastered so many of the little things that Sixers head coach Nick Nurse had no choice but to turn to him as the team's starting power forward for much of last season.
After reflecting on his breakout debut season in Philadelphia, Barlow told PhillyVoice in a phone interview in July that he entered the summer with a focus on improving his shooting. An early season elbow injury ruined his mechanics and caused him to compensate with his wrist and shoulder, causing wrist discomfort. Fully healthy early in the summer, Barlow's focus has been on the placement of his elbow as he loads up to shoot. His main focus has been getting shots up from the corners.
The more Dominick Barlow shares the floor with Joel Embiid, the more he is going to be challenged to knock down this exact shot: pic.twitter.com/iaQIK2aFwk
— Adam Aaronson's clips (@SixersAdamClips) October 26, 2025
“Right now, just looking at our personnel, the guys we have running the floor and filling in those spots, I think making that shot is the most important thing," Barlow said. "And if I'm making other shots, it's definitely a plus. But if I can space the floor out from the corners, I think it gives our team a whole different look with all the other stuff that I do."
It did not take a detective to figure out that Barlow's focus should be on shooting; his status as a non-shooter doomed his chances of logging significant minutes in last year's playoffs. In four NBA seasons, Barlow has shot 25.4 percent from beyond the arc and 70.1 percent on free throws. He is determined to make a leap there; if he does he could be in line for a significant contract next summer when he becomes a 24-year-old unrestricted free agent.
There are levels to Barlow's potential shooting leap. Nobody should be expecting him to regularly camp out on the perimeter waiting for drive-and-kick plays to benefit him as a spot-up shooter. He will never be a pick-and-pop big, either. But on a team with so many offensive threats, opposing defenses will view leaving Barlow wide open as a cost of doing business. When he has to float into those spots, can he simply make a decent percentage of his open looks?
If the answer is yes, transition offense will not be the only setting in which Barlow scores easy points as a result of playing with stars.
SIXERS FILM STUDIES
Jaylen Brown's strengths | Jaylen Brown's weaknesses
Anfernee Simons | Dean Wade | Ariel Hukporti
Early in the season, Nurse went to Barlow as a small-ball five every now and then; the results were typically promising. Nurse abandoned it for a long time, only returning to it during the playoffs. Barlow did give the Sixers a bit of a boost as a backup center during their second-round sweep at the hands of the New York Knicks:
Dominick Barlow gave the Sixers a real jolt as a small-ball five in the second half of their Game 2 loss: pic.twitter.com/dObO1f7KDY
— Adam Aaronson's clips (@SixersAdamClips) May 8, 2026
With more minutes accounted for at power forward between James and Dean Wade, perhaps there is a world in which Barlow splits his minutes between playing the four – the Sixers should pair him up with Embiid as much as they possibly can in those cases – and sliding up to the five.
Barlow playing center would allow the Sixers to switch everything and give them optimal end-to-end speed as a transition offense. The primary concern would not necessarily be rim protection, as Barlow's feel would help him in that respect, but defensive rebounding, where he was not nearly as impactful as the Sixers would have liked last season.
"Getting bigger and stronger has been the focus regardless. So whether that's at the four or the five, I think we could do a lot of versatile stuff as a team, including with myself," Barlow said. "Obviously, I'm willing to play wherever I'm needed to play at. But I think when you have [Embiid], he's so dynamic, it gives you choices of things to do."
SIXERS SIGN LEBRON JAMES
James' decision | Projecting Sixers' rotation | James' impact, on and off the court
