The first Sixers’ slop of the offseason comes as no surprise.
Nothing shocking here, but the offseason planning is officially underway.
As the lottery and subsequent draft come closer, we got our first bit of free agency news courtesy of Marc Stein and Jake Fischer of the Stein Line substack.
They have reported that the Sixers expect Kelly Oubre Jr., Andre Drummond and Eric Gordon to pick up their player options to return to Philadelphia next season. This was also basically confirmed by Daryl Morey on his recent appearance on the Rights to Ricky Sanchez podcast.
“They’re all likely to come back,” he said when addressing roster continuity. “I think they’ve said that themselves publicly.”
Both the Stein report and Morey’s interview also gave some insight on the two most crucial free agents this summer in Quentin Grimes and Guerschon Yabusele. Stein and Fischer have reported that the team is “expressing confidence” they will be able to retain both.
Hearing Morey talk through this was pretty interesting. His tone seemed more hopeful on keeping Grimes than Yabu, but that could be reading into it too much. He got pretty in depth on Grimes’ long-term fit next to Tyrese Maxey, but only said he hopes to re-sign Yabusele.
Liberty Ballers’ resident cap guru Bryan Toporek helped me break down Philadelphia’s cap space situation with all three of those options picked up. Under the safe assumption the core of this team remains intact, the Sixers will be $15.2 million dollars over the cap with Gordon, Oubre and Drummond coming back.
That gives them $18.1 million dollars to operate before they hit the luxury tax and $26.1 million dollars before the dreaded first apron. That basically means the Sixers will only have the $5.7 million dollar tax payer exception available to them, unless Grimes gets paid way less than anyone is expecting.
The trio of Oubre, Drummond and Gordon make $8, $5, and $3.4 million dollars respectively — all three of those are fairly moveable contracts if the Sixers feel crunched. After the seasons those guys had though, it feels likely they’ll be back in Philadelphia next season.