Aside from the obvious benefits in this year’s draft to selecting in the top six, life now gets easier for Philadelphia in future first rounds.
The Sixers still owe a first-round pick to the Oklahoma City Thunder. That obligation did not extinguish because the lottery was kind to the Sixers on Monday night and awarded Philadelphia the third overall selection in next month’s draft. The protection now drops on the pick and it will become a top-four protected selection in 2026 and 2027. In the extremely minuscule possibility that Philadelphia lands in the top four in both of those drafts, the Sixers will send the Thunder a 2027 second-round pick.
For purposes of discussion, everyone should assume the Sixers are now sending next year’s first-rounder to the Thunder. I’m not a doctor, and I don’t think even the best doctors in the world can be certain of the level Joel Embiid and Paul George are going to perform at in 2025-26. But I do feel pretty confident in assuming that even the worst version of the 2025-26 Sixers is not 24-58 the way the 2024-25 Sixers were.
Even if there is no improvement in the availability and performances of Embiid and George, the Sixers still went the final three quarters of 2024-25 without Jared McCain and Tyrese Maxey missed 30 games last season. A healthier backcourt, coupled with what’s likely to be a full season of Quentin Grimes, plus perhaps some improvements from young players like Justin Edwards and Adem Bona who both showed promise last year should already do enough for Philly to win more games next season. Then throw in whatever you do get from two of your max players, and I’m putting the floor on next season at making the play-in tournament with the ceiling being returning to title contention.
While everyone would love for the Sixers to be playing playoff basketball at this time next year, to further illustrate our point, we’re going to remain focused on the floor for next season that we’ve now established is the play-in tournament. Let’s say Philadelphia is one of the two teams that does not make it out of the play-in tournament in the East. That would put the Sixers towards the end of the lottery next year with a very high probability of sending the Thunder a pick in the 11-14 range. Even if that were to happen, that’s still a better outcome than sending Oklahoma City the seventh overall selection in this year’s draft.
So now let’s fast forward a year. The Sixers went 37-45, lost in the play-in tournament and paid off the debt to Oklahoma City by sending them the 12th pick in the 2026 draft. The health of Embiid and George is not drastically improving and both players are one year older. Daryl Morey and Nick Nurse may also be fired at that point, but regardless of who’s in charge, those people will probably all realize a championship is not happening with Embiid and George. The degree with which the Sixers need to rebuild at that point might still be a little bit unclear because there are some younger players on this roster that are worth being excited about and the Sixers will add two more players to that mix with picks 3 and 35 next month. But, the organization’s priority will be on the future and not the present and they will transition out of win-now mode in this hypothetical scenario and focus on continuing to infuse the roster with youth.
With the first-round obligation paid off to the Thunder, that goal of continuing to get younger will get much easier at this time next year. The Sixers would then have their own 2027 first-round pick without any conditions on it. In 2028, the Sixers would owe a top-eight protected first-rounder to Brooklyn to complete the Ben Simmons/James Harden trade. This is where Philadelphia retaining its 2025 first-rounder serves the franchise an additional benefit. That future debt to Brooklyn can only be paid off two years after the Sixers send the Thunder a first-round pick, which we now know will be in 2026 and not 2025. So now, the Sixers will only have the Brooklyn obligation hanging over them in just 2028, and not also in 2027.
If the Sixers pick were to land in the top eight in three years, meaning they still have not sent Brooklyn a first-round pick by 2028, they will owe the Nets their 2028 second-round pick and that will close the book on that debt. As of now, the Sixers are still holding a 2028 unprotected first-round pick via the Los Angeles Clippers who are also one of the NBA’s oldest rosters currently, thus making an unprotected first-rounder of theirs very valuable. So, if we reach the point we already described where next season is still a sub-.500 season and comes with a loss in the play-in tournament, the Sixers can then turn the page and focus on the future knowing they have their own first-round pick in 2027, a highly-valuable Clippers first-round pick in 2028 and their own pick top-eight protected in 2028. For a franchise that’s been so focused on winning now, that’s not a bad place to start from an asset management standpoint.
There’s a chance these kinds of conversations are percolating in Philadelphia’s front office quite a bit between now and this year’s draft. If the Sixers do choose to operate as if Embiid and George do not exist and 2025-26 might not come with drastic improvement, they might consider trading back from the third overall selection to acquire more draft capital in the future. After all, the Sixers, and many people outside of the Sixers’ front office, thought they had enough on this year’s roster to contend. So if that belief still exists, why not hedge a little bit on it by adding future draft selections in the event that there are no such bounce backs in health from the two aging stars? Could Philadelphia entertain moving back five slots to eighth overall and re-acquiring its 2028 first-rounder from Brooklyn?
The Nets are armed with a treasure chest of draft picks from the Kevin Durant and Mikal Bridges trades. There might be a deal to be made with Brooklyn that does not include the Sixers getting their first-rounder back in 2028 anyway and allows Philly to add more future assets that previously belonged to other teams that the Nets currently hold. But we did see Morey reacquire this year’s second-rounder at the deadline so a similar deal with Brooklyn involving the team’s own 2028 first-rounder would make sense, especially if Morey feels good about his job security three years from now.
It will be interesting to see what kind of balance between the present and the future Philly attempts to walk this offseason. Are Morey and company confident enough in Embiid and George being healthy and productive to perhaps dangle the highly-coveted 2028 unprotected Clippers first-round pick in trade talks? Or do they look at moving back from the third overall selection and drafting a lesser prospect this year but improving their stock of assets for the future given they soon may be looking towards the next era of Sixers basketball anyway?
If I had to guess, I would say the answer lies in the middle. I do not expect them to part with that future Clippers pick this summer, but I also think the most likely situation that plays out in the first-round is staying at three and selecting the best player available who the Sixers believe has the highest long-term ceiling and can still help them immediately. As you can tell, there are quite a few options for the Sixers now and practically all of these options wouldn’t exist if they sent this year’s first-rounder to Oklahoma City.