Today is Tuesday, which means it's time to answer your latest questions in another Sixers mailbag. Let's talk about possible draft trades and the possible markets for two key free agents:
From @bho14: It is generally best player available at the top of the draft, but are there possible roster construction issues with the guards at the top fitting in with Jared McCain/Tyrese Maxey? Would there be consideration to move one if they landed a non-Flagg top pick?
Let's say the Sixers land the No. 2 overall pick, where the consensus believes Rutgers star guard Dylan Harper should be the pick. With Sixers President of Basketball Operations Daryl Morey has made it clear that if the Sixers keep their pick, they will select the best player on the board, and it is nearly a unanimous opinion that Harper is that.
At that point, there are three options: drafting Harper hoping to figure out the fit later, moving one of the team's current building block guards as the question suggests, and trading down. Let's go one by one:
Selecting Harper, a player considered to have a very real chance of becoming a star guard who can serve as the primary ball-handler on a very good team, feels like the most likely outcome without any ensuing trades in the immediate-term. Harper can be eased into the NBA on a limited role that takes advantage of his strongest traits while the team works on his weaknesses behind the scenes. With Harper on a four-year rookie scale contract, McCain having three years remaining on his own initial deal and Maxey having another four years on the max contract he signed last summer, the Sixers would not be forced to rush into deciding how they eventually shuffle things around.
Moving Maxey or McCain immediately to provide Harper with a more significant role right off the bat seems extremely unrealistic, not to mention irrational. Maxey is one of the better guards in the NBA and still only 24 years old; McCain was hastily thrown into an NBA rotation and immediately produced like a fringe star on the offensive end of the floor. Harper is a tantalizing prospect, and if the Sixers pick at No. 2 they should take him if they agree with the consensus opinion that he is the second-best prospect in this class. But trading Maxey or McCain prematurely would be a grave mistake — trade markets will exist in spades for those players down the line.
Perhaps the Sixers can extract 130 cents on the dollar for the No. 2 pick in a trade down. What I have in mind here is not a deal involving veteran talent, but the Sixers moving down in the lottery and adding some premium future draft compensation in return. If the Sixers are at No. 2 and a team like the Brooklyn Nets is at No. 7, desperate for potential superstar talent, could the Sixers add one or even two future first-round picks from Brooklyn's massive collection in a swap of 2025 first-rounders? That would be a possibility worth investigating.
MORE: Jared McCain year-in-review
From @realstuartl: If Sixers end up picking 4-6, when all top players are guards, should Morey look to trade help for a legitimate power forward?
If the Sixers do trade their pick, doing so for a veteran is considerably more likely with each slot farther down on the board they are. As I wrote about extensively on March 6, the Sixers do not have tremendous capacity in terms of salary they can absorb in a trade at the draft.
Some of the most noteworthy aspects of that discussion from last month:
"But what if the Sixers end up with the No. 5 or No. 6 pick, for example? That region of the draft is stacked with intriguing guard-sized prospects. The Sixers' three strongest long-term building blocks right now, however, are all of a similar ilk. With Tyrese Maxey and Jared McCain locked in for years to come and Quentin Grimes emerging as a foundational piece, could the Sixers see the draft board break in a way that does not favor their needs and look to trade their pick instead?
…
So if the Sixers were to trade their first-rounder and do so for a player who helps them win in the short-term, they would be very limited in how much salary they can take back — greatly narrowing the field of possible targets and reducing the likelihood of a deal. The maximum salary they would realistically take back in this scenario is probably in the ballpark of $12.5 million, and that is assuming Andre Drummond decides to pick up his $5 million player option before the draft occurs.
The path to that money: sending Drummond's expiring contract to another team, then picking up team options for Jared Butler and Lonnie Walker IV, projected to be worth approximately $5.2 million combined, and sending those out in a deal. Ricky Council IV's non-guaranteed salary of $2.2 million provides a bit more financial capacity."
The challenge is finding a player who is A) conceivably available in a deal, B) makes no more than about $12.5 million and C) is a needle-mover for the Sixers to the degree that it would be worth parting with a premium first-round pick.
Back in March, I highlighted the possibility of players entering their fourth NBA seasons — with one year left on their rookie scale deals but potential extension talks looming — as possible targets. From a positional perspective, Jabari Smith Jr. of the Houston Rockets made the most sense to me. But trading a top-six pick for Smith with the next contract on the way seems unwise for the Sixers. With Houston likely picking at No. 9 or No. 10 via Phoenix, a deal centered around the Sixers' pick going to Houston in exchange for Smith and Phoenix's pick does not seem fair to the Rockets.
If the Sixers indeed land in a region of the draft board filled with prospects who are shaky fits, using the pick to trade for an active player with a more defined skillset would make sense in a vacuum. Unfortunately, it is much more difficult to actually pull off.
MORE: Daryl Morey takes blame for disastrous season, talks offseason
From @evanmaz1: What do Guerschon Yabusele and Quentin Grimes extensions look like realistically?
Morey said in his exit interview last Sunday that the team values Yabusele tremendously and would love to have him back, even if his role is a bit different from a positional perspective (the hope is Yabusele can play more power forward minutes while logging fewer center minutes as a result of improved availability for Embiid). But Yabusele has already proven to be a quality option at either position, and the Sixers keeping the 29-year-old around would justify them turning down attractive trade offers for him in February when contenders were calling.
The absolute perfect world for the Sixers is that Yabusele can be re-signed at a price not exceeding two years and about $11.6 million. That is the full amount of the taxpayer's mid-level exception, which would be the ideal path to signing a new deal with Yabusele. The Sixers could go above that figure, but there would be ramifications: dipping into the non-taxpayer's mid-level exception immediately initiates a hard cap at the first apron, a number the Sixers would be barred from exceeding under any circumstances for the entire league year. That would make everything a tight squeeze for the remainder of the offseason and possibly doom the team's chances of keeping Kelly Oubre Jr. around.
For Grimes, the Sixers would be wise to remain patient and watch as the 24-year-old's market dwindles. As things stand now, only the Nets project to enter free agency with significant cap space; if they do not make a run at Grimes the Sixers will have a chance to squeeze the breakout guard into signing a deal that is especially team-friendly.
Grimes is a restricted free agent, which means the Sixers can match any offer sheet he signs with another team. In today's NBA, no team inks a player to an offer sheet without having a genuine belief that it could go unmatched. And just about every team outside of Brooklyn cannot offer Grimes more than about four years and $60 million — while the Sixers would surely prefer to have Grimes on a deal with an average annual value closer to $10 million than $15 million, matching a four-year, $60 million offer sheet would be an absolute no-brainer.
The guess here as of the third week of April: the Sixers secure Grimes on a long-term deal earning him somewhere between $10 million and $12 million annually.
MORE: 5 free agent targets to monitor
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