Everybody can put their pencils down. After making three trades in as many days, the Sixers are done making deals with the NBA's trade deadline passing on Thursday afternoon. Let's zoom out and viewing the totality of what the Sixers have gained and lost since making their first deal on Tuesday:
Added…
• Quentin Grimes
• own 2025 second-round pick
• Jared Butler
• more favorable of Phoenix and Golden State's 2027 second-round picks
• Golden State's 2028 second-round pick
• more favorable of Phoenix and Portland's 2030 second-round picks
• Washington's 2030 second-round pick
• Chuma Okeke (agreed to 10-day contract)
Lost…
• Caleb Martin
• own 2030 second-round pick
• KJ Martin
• Milwaukee's 2027 second-round pick
• Dallas' 2031 second-round pick
• Reggie Jackson
• least favorable of Los Angeles Clippers, Oklahoma City and Houston's 2026 first-round picks
• Pete Nance (waived to make room for Butler)
So, what did the Sixers accomplish this week? It surely seems like they entered with the goal of ducking below the NBA's luxury tax threshold, and they were able to do that, likely saving the team in the ballpark of $40 million between shedding about $14 million in salary and going from facing a luxury tax bill to expecting a luxury tax payment on behalf of the teams which do surpass the threshold.
The heavy lifting there: spending two second-round picks to remove KJ Martin's $7.9 million salary from the team's books despite his impressive production this season at 24 years old. As Martin's 2025-26 salary of just over $8 million is non-guaranteed, the move did not afford the Sixers any financial flexibility.
The Sixers decided to move on from Caleb Martin in the first season of a cost-effective four-year deal, swapping him for the much younger Grimes, who makes about $3.9 million less this season but will become a restricted free agent in the summer. Grimes has a lesser track record than the player he was moved for, but has clearly been better this season and has room for further improvement. A decent argument could be made that the Sixers upgraded their wing rotation with this move, even if it is smaller and less battle-tested.
In the same deal, the Sixers reacquired their own second-round pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, currently slated to be the No. 37 overall selection. They will almost certainly only be keeping their first-round pick in June if they experience an unlikely jump in the lottery, as they owe the pick to Oklahoma City with a top-six protection. Now the Sixers will definitively have a draft pick of some kind, and if they fail to turn their season around it will be a fairly valuable one.
Even after spending two second-round picks to salary dump KJ Martin and adding their own 2030 second-round pick to the deal after a brief snag in Caleb Martin's physical stemming from the right hip issue which has sidelined him since last month, the Sixers netted two future second-round picks this week, giving them eight in all over the next seven drafts.
They did this by trading a first-rounder with extremely low upside in a deal with the Wizards. The 2026 first-rounder will be the least favorable of three current playoff teams in the Western Conference, including a juggernaut Oklahoma City team and a Houston squad very much on the rise.
That pick being in the final few spots of the first round is a pretty good bet, and the Sixers used it to replenish their collection of second-rounders, get off Jackson's salary and replace him with a two-way point guard in Jared Butler who is a strong candidate to be converted to a standard NBA deal in the near future.
The fascinating part of all of the discussion about the luxury tax: a team trying to maneuver to get beneath the tax line is almost always required to trim the talent on its roster. But it is unclear if that actually happened here. Grimes' three-point shooting and perimeter defense will make him a signifiant piece of head coach Nick Nurse's rotation, replacing an underperforming player in Caleb Martin who has spent much of the season dealing with injuries. KJ Martin had become an extremely helpful piece early in the season, but during his six-week absence, undrafted two-way rookie wing Justin Edwards has emerged as a replacement. Butler has a far better chance of sticking in the rotation than Jackson did, though the 24-year-old floor general is not a sure thing.
If ducking the luxury tax threshold was a prerequisite to the Sixers' trade deadline activity, they did about as well as one could have hoped. But of course, many will understandably express frustration that a team which entered the season with championship aspirations ended up pivoting to an elaborate string of deals which saves ownership money.
SIXERS TRADE DEADLINE INSTANT REACTIONS
Grimes for Caleb Martin | KJ Martin sent to Detroit | Swapping guards & picks with Wizards
Follow Adam on Twitter: @SixersAdam
Follow PhillyVoice on Twitter: @thephillyvoice
