This week we dive into your questions about lottery odds, the draft and the Sixers’ complicated offseason ahead.
Welcome back, friends.
As always, I appreciate all the questions. Please keep them coming every Monday as we grind out the last 10 games of the season. Obviously, most of your questions have been geared towards the offseason and the future of the team. I’ll do my best to answer those but I’ll also let you know that our resident CBA guru Bryan Toporek is doing a mailbag every Wednesday for those curious about contract nuances.
Let’s get into it!
Good place to start.
So unlike playoff seeding, there are no tiebreakers for lottery odds. The ping pong balls are simply split up if teams finish with the same record. You could get into a coin toss scenario depending on how it all shakes out. It would behoove the Sixers greatly to finish with a worse record than the Nets as I’m sure everyone is aware by now.
Obviously, Flagg is the guy at No. 1. I said last week and I stand by it — if their pick lands in the top four they absolutely should take a player. Rutgers’ Dylan Harper would be a weird fit but he’s also awesome. He’s not on Flagg’s level but he’s the No. 1 pick in a lot of other drafts. Rutgers’ Ace Bailey probably fits the best here because of his size, shot and defensive versatility. His biggest issue at the moment is shot creation which isn’t necessarily the Sixers’ biggest need. Baylor’s V.J. Edgecombe is also a slightly weird fit as a pure two but he’s so incredibly dynamic that you take him and figure it out.
I’ve seen many people suggest trading back if the pick falls to five or six. I get the idea, but I’m also not sure which team is trading up and if you’d get proper value. Maybe a team falls in love with Duke’s Kon Knueppel, who was excellent in the ACC Tournament while Flagg was out. Conversely, maybe the Sixers are better off taking a guy like Knueppel — it’s not like 6-foot-7 guys that can shoot the lights out and put the ball on the deck grow on trees. As I mentioned previously, I’m also very high on Texas’ Tre Johnson.
If someone like San Antonio is willing to give you two picks inside the top 20 for pick five or six, it’s certainly worth considering, but I’m not sure if that’s realistic. As they say, it takes two to tango.
Let’s stick with the draft talk. Another good one here.
I’ll start by saying it’s nearly impossible to know these things going into the draft. Would I have thought that Jared McCain would look this good as an NBA starter and (at one point) become the runaway favorite for Rookie of the Year? Nope! And I say that as someone who loved the pick and was super high on McCain. If the Sixers were actually whole this season, I think he would’ve played a huge role in any type of playoff run.
Are there guys that could potentially do that between pick three and six? Maybe! The two guys that probably fit the best right now in that range are Bailey and Knueppel. They both can shoot and both can play on the wing. As mentioned, Edgecombe is a tricky fit as a two guard but he could make an immediate impact given his elite athleticism, great frame and ability to defend. His shot is streaky but it’s far from broken. I’m higher on Johnson than most, but I’m curious how he’ll hold up physically in the NBA on the wing. Still, he’s another guy that can really shoot it and score at 6-foot-6.
I have been and always will be a proponent of best player available. Whether that guy can play now or two years from now, you always take the best player available. That’s also been Morey’s strategy. Think about the 2024 draft. He chose the 20-year-old McCain over 23-year-old Dalton Knecht. Everything suggested Knecht was the more NBA-ready player, but Morey liked McCain’s upside more. With all due respect to Knecht, I think most NBA executives would take McCain right now.
That’s not even getting into the fact that the Sixers absolutely should have one eye on the future given the uncertainty of Joel Embiid and Paul George’s health.
Personally, I don’t see the upside to doing that. If this scenario plays out you simply take Flagg and get the most you can out of Embiid and George until the wheels fall off. Flagg would be an exceptional fit between the two of them to compete right now. He’ll then become another franchise cornerstone to join the likes of Maxey, McCain and (possibly) Grimes. The Sixers would be in a rare spot where they can try to win now while knowing another bigger (and likely more promising) window is right around the corner.
Mathematically, they’re still in it! (What the hell are the Heat even doing?)
This is definitely a better question for Bryan, but I can give it a crack.
As we’ve pointed out, the only true threat to sign Grimes to an offer sheet as of now is the Brooklyn Nets. Given the Nets will actually have work to do just to hit the salary floor let alone go over the cap, them throwing money at Grimes would make a bit of sense. The guess here is it will likely fall between $15-$20 million per season — something like four years and $60-$80 million.
Whatever Brooklyn offers Grimes, the Sixers will likely match it. Letting Grimes walk after pulling that trade off during a miserable season would be a disaster. So it’s my theory that if the Nets do offer Grimes a big contract, it will likely be just to jack up the price on the Sixers — a tactic Sean Marks has deployed several times before. There are other intriguing restricted free agents Marks could target, but given Grimes’ explosion here to end the season he might be the most sensible one.
The biggest implication of matching an expensive Grimes’ offer sheet would be the team’s ability to re-sign Guerschon Yabusele. If Grimes’ deal falls in the $20 million per year range, it could mean the end for Yabusele’s time here.
For something more in-depth on Grimes’ next contract, I would check out Bryan’s most recent article on it.
You never know, but I would be pretty surprised if Daryl Morey is fired.
First things first, he’s one of the highest-paid executives in the NBA and recently signed an extension through the 2027-28 season. It would be very costly for the Sixers to move on from him.
I also think the ownership group will give him at least another season given how disastrous this one was from an injury standpoint. Morey took a couple big gambles signing 34-year-old George to a four-year max contract and giving Embiid an extension coming off another meniscus surgery. George dealt with multiple injuries all season long and Embiid’s knee was never right.
This will get a collective groan but if … IF … George and Embiid can bounce back, the Sixers can turn this around quickly — especially if they add a high first-round pick into the mix. With that said, there will be no excuses if George and Embiid can’t stay on the floor and the rest of the roster is unable to win games without them.
The last thing I’d add, as much as the big swings were big misses this season, Morey did well in other places. Drafting McCain and Adem Bona, signing Justin Edwards as an undrafted free agent, signing Yabusele, trading for Grimes and Jared Butler — that’s a third of a roster worth of quality players added over the past few months.
Morey is a guy that’s always gone big game hunting but with the Sixers, he’s done his best work on the margins.
As for Embiid, I’m as curious as the rest of you. I can respect that he wants to look into more radical treatment plans, but it’s worrying that it’s come to that.
PRP injections are actually more common now in the U.S. Embiid has reportedly received those before. What you’re referring to is something called Orthokine — very similar from my understanding. Kobe Bryant did it in 2011. He had to go to Germany because it’s considered experimental and it’s not done in the U.S. For what it’s worth, Bryant did it ahead of his age 33 season and wound up having two outstanding seasons before all the injuries caught up to him.
And yeah, the transplant won’t happen. Not only is it experimental, but it took Lonzo Ball years to get back to playing NBA games after having it done. Ball is also a 27-year-old guard, not a 31-year-old seven-footer.