The good news for Dustin Salisbery Thursday was that he made the Philadelphia 76ers' summer-league team.
Better news happened, without Salisbery even knowing it, in Charlotte, N.C.
There, the NBA Bobcats announced they had come to terms with Matt Carroll on a six-year, $27 million contract.
Carroll played at Harboro-Horsham High School near Philly, and at Notre Dame. His high school teams knocked Hempfield and Lebanon out of the PIAA playoffs.
Like Salisbery, Carroll is a 6-foot-5 guard. Like Salisbery, he was not chosen in the NBA draft after college.
Carroll played a year in the NBA's Development League, and then was cut by New York, Portland, San Antonio and Golden State before finding a team that was bad enough, and had enough use for his ability to come off screens and shoot jump shots.
Now he's financially secure for life.
Salisbery is far more athletic than Carroll. If they played one-on-one, Salisbery would win. If you saw them both on the playground and were choosing sides, you'd take Salisbery first.
This is not to make Carroll sound like a lucky stiff. He is an NBA-level athlete, and has made himself a more-than-legit NBA player who averaged 12.1 points last season for the Bobcats, shooting 42 percent from three-point range.
But if he can do it, it's possible, just possible, that Salisbery can.
"My goal is to come back from Las Vegas with a contract," Salisbery said Thursday, after the Sixers' final pre-summer-league workout at the team's practice facility.
But Salisbery didn't know exactly what he meant by that. It could be the D-League, if he catches the eye of an NBA team that could send him there, or one of the many overseas pro leagues.
"There are some places I probably wouldn't go, but not many," Salisbery said.
As for the D-League, he added, "That decision wouldn't really be made by me. It would have to be a team talking with my agent [Andre Buck] to figure out what's best for my career."
Barring a near-miraculous series of events, he is not going to come back from Vegas with a Sixers contract and roster spot.
The club's roster (not the summer-league roster) shows 12 players under contract plus first-round draft picks Jason Smith and Thaddeus Young, free agents Joe Smith and Alan Henderson, lower draft picks Herbert Hill and Derrick Byars, and summer-league free agents Louis Amundson and Bobby Jones.
Although Salisbery's natural position is shooting guard, he played point guard, shooting guard and small forward during last week's two-a-day minicamp workouts.
"I thought I did OK at all three," he said. "Getting to play point guard last year in college helped me a lot."
Willie Green is the only pure shooting guard the Sixers have, but they are overrun with mid-size, swingman types.
Another sobering thing: By modern NBA standards, Salisbery's not young for this point in his career.
He's about four months from his 23rd birthday. Louis Williams, a Sixers backup point guard heading into his third NBA season, is 20. In Allen Iverson's rookie year, Williams was 9, it was revealed Thursday.
And Williams won't even be the Sixers' youngest player. Lottery pick Young just turned 19.
"I think of him as a vet," Young said of Williams Thursday. "I kind of look to him for advice."
Of the 15 players who participated in last week's minicamp, only one, Philadelphia University forward Christian Burns, didn't make the trip to Las Vegas.
But other than the draft picks and veterans, it's very unlikely that anyone from the summer-league roster will make the Sixers.
Salisbery has a chance to be Lancaster County's first NBA player since Wally Walker, but it's not likely to happen in the short-term future.
For it to happen, Salisbery will have to figure out what kind of player he is.
One thing he can do, something he was indifferent to at times at McCaskey, is play defense.
During Thursday's workout he matched up against a quick, 6-2 point guard in Williams, a 6-7 swingman in Jones, and 6-10 Edin Bavcic, a forward from Bosnia in the Dirk Nowitzki mold.
None of them scored much, if at all, on the 6-4 Salisbery's watch.
But Salisbery didn't score, either, during a 16-minute (of game clock) scrimmage.
Again: What is he?
He's athletic, but he's not Tracy McGrady. He can score, but he's not, at least yet, a come-off-screens-and-shoot-jumpers guy, like say Coatesville's Rip Hamilton.
Although he mostly worked at point guard Thursday, he doesn't appear to have quite the handle, playmaking skill or surreal quickness to deal with Steve Nash and Tony Parker.
Also, Salisbery has always come with some odd intangibles. He plays laboriously, with a sort of dour look and body language. He's not a fiery sparkplug type, and he doesn't appear to be having much fun.
It can't be real indifference. It's probably just who Salisbery is; it doesn't make sense for him to have flown all over the country for workouts the past few months if he doesn't seriously want this.
But coaches don't have time to get to intimately know rookie free agents, so appearances are a kind of shorthand.
"Everything you do, everything you say, counts," Sixers coach Maurice Cheeks told the team as they huddled after Thursday's practice.
"People are watching you. Not just us. Every NBA team and a lot of other people."
The Sixers beat the San Antonio Spurs, perhaps distracted by the Parker-Eva Longoria wedding, in their first summer-league game in Vegas Friday.
Oddly, the Sixers used only nine players. The Spurs had 10 play 15 minutes or more.
Salisbery played 3:41. He had one steal and one shot attempt.
It was only the first step in a long journey.
At the end of the rainbow, after kicking around the minor leagues and being cut four times, is Matt Carroll, ordering his Lamborghini.
Mike Gross is a Sunday News sports writer. E-mail him at mgross@lnpnews.com.
