Sixers Summer Cap Space Options with Bryan Toporek
The Sixers could have more cap space than anyone, but what can they realistically do with all of it?
With the trade deadline behind us and some time remaining in the All-Star break, I figured now would be a good time to have a discussion about the Sixers’ potential plans this summer now that we have a good idea of what their cap sheet will look like.
Since the intricacies of the salary cap are not my area of expertise, I decided to bring in someone who can help with this type of discussion. Bryan Toporek of Forbes Sports, Bleacher Report, and Liberty Ballers was kind enough to lend some time to let me bounce ideas off of him and provide some insight into how this all works. You can find him on Twitter / X @BToporek.
Mike: I want to start by just laying out some basics of the Sixers’ situation for any readers who may be unaware before I get into my first question for you.
The Sixers have just two players under contract for next season, and one of them (Paul Reed) is non-guaranteed. They could very realistically have up to $58.4 million in cap space heading into free agency. In order to do that, though, they would have to renounce their cap holds on every player except for Tyrese Maxey.
Cap holds are essentially a placeholder figure that counts against the cap which gives you the option to sign a player for that amount of money or less, even if you are over the cap. If you choose to renounce a player’s cap hold, that amount of money will come off of your cap sheet, but you can then only sign them if you remain under the cap after doing so. For a visual, here is what the Sixers’ cap sheet looks like before and after renouncing everyone but Maxey, courtesy of Cleaning The Glass.
Before:
After:
I’ll start off Bryan by pitching you my dream scenario for the off-season. You wrote an interesting article recently about how signing free agents isn’t the only potential use of cap space. That got me thinking about the potential viability of a Tobias Harris sign-and-trade. If the Sixers (with another team’s help, of course) can get Harris to agree to a reasonable contract (let’s say, 3 years, $60 million) and ship him out with picks for a win-now piece, they would still then have the ability to re-sign all of their current players using their cap holds even if that brings them close to the salary cap.
The dream scenario would be to trade Harris and several picks for Mikal Bridges, but perhaps more realistically, a Harris plus picks for Jerami Grant deal makes some sense. They could make that trade and lose very little in terms of their ability to retain current players. Does this all sound logical to you, and also, are there any restrictions on sign and trades that might be relevant here?
Bryan: First off, thanks for having me! I've been a longtime RTRS fan, and as a Georgetown alum, I was a #lickface believer before even Spike and Mike.
Mikal Bridges would likewise be my No. 1 target this offseason, in large part because he's on a well-below-max deal. I'm skeptical of the sustainability of three-max cores for most teams under the new CBA, but Bridges will be comically underpaid through 2025-26. That will make it more difficult to sign him to an extension down the line, but that's a problem for another day.
There are a few restrictions on sign-and-trades that the Sixers would have to be mindful of. Teams over either apron can't acquire a player via sign-and-trade, which immediately rules out more than one-third of the league. Sign-and-trade contracts have to be for at least three seasons, although only the first year has to be fully guaranteed. And once a team acquires a player via sign-and-trade, it becomes hard-capped at the first apron for the remainder of that season.
Both the Blazers and Nets project to be well under the first apron next year, so the hard cap shouldn't be much of a deterrent for them. Since the Blazers are rebuilding and the Nets are retooling, both will likely try to stay below the projected $171.3 million luxury-tax threshold, much less either of the aprons. But beyond that, there's nothing stopping either team from taking Harris or some of the Sixers' other soon-to-be free agents in a sign-and-trade.
Bridges figures to cost far more than Grant in terms of draft compensation, but the Sixers could have as many as five first-round picks to offer this offseason. They can't outbid the likes of the OKC Thunder or San Antonio Spurs, but they're far better positioned to go star-hunting than most other contenders. And to your point, a sign-and-trade could allow the Sixers to operate as an over-the-cap team, which would preserve their Bird rights for De'Anthony Melton, Nicolas Batum and Buddy Hield. That would spare them from having to overhaul nearly their entire roster this summer, which Daryl Morey recently cautioned against.
Mike: Got it, that all makes sense. I was not aware of the restriction on sign and trades for teams over the first apron. That rules out any pipe dreams of trading for Kevin Durant or LeBron James. They could theoretically renounce everyone and acquire them via cap space, but that’s a bit hard to imagine. I imagine that the only remotely feasible way of acquiring LeBron would be to draft Bronny, have LeBron opt out, and sign him into your cap space.
Anyways, back to the real world. Let's say that the Sixers want to sort of straddle two paths this summer – they want to retain a couple of their current guys while also having ample cap space to sign free agents.
In that case, in order to have the most cap space possible, they would have to come to terms with their current players first prior to signing anyone on the open market? For example, if the Sixers decide that they’d like to re-sign Buddy Hield and De’Anthony Melton, and they are able to do so for less than their cap holds are worth ($28.9M and $15.2M, respectively), would it behoove them to ink those deals prior to signing free agents on the open market?
For hypothetical sake, if they renounce everyone but Maxey, and re-sign Hield and Melton for a combined total of $30 million next season, they would then have $30.7M remaining in cap space. I’m not 100 percent sure who their free-agent targets would be, but they certainly would have a nice chunk of space. But basically, if they want to be players in free agency, they don’t just want their cap holds sitting there. They would want to re-sign them or renounce them, right?
And, one more tangentially related question. In this hypothetical scenario, they would be renouncing the cap holds of Nico Batum and Robert Covington. They would still be able to potentially sign those two guys to minimum contracts after renouncing them, correct?
Bryan: Yep, order of operations will be critical this summer for that exact reason. Re-signing Maxey will be among the last things they officially do so they can keep his cheap cap hold on their books for as long as possible. In that same vein, I'd imagine re-signing Hield will be one of their first priorities, because I doubt he earns more than his cap hold next year.
If they're able to re-sign Melton for less than his cap hold, they'll likewise want to make that official first before turning their attention to free agency. But if they want to operate as an over-the-cap team, it would behoove them to keep those cap holds on the books at first, especially if any of their free agents will be earning less on their new deals.
The good news is that the new CBA allows teams to negotiate with their own free agents one day after the NBA Finals end, so we won't have a sequel to "Daryl Morey ghosts James Harden in the days leading up to free agency" this summer. The Sixers should have a fairly clear idea of how much each of their free agents wants and the likelihood of retaining them by the time June 30 rolls around.
And yes, renouncing the cap holds of Batum and Covington only means that the Sixers would be forfeiting their Bird Rights for those two. They could still re-sign them to either a minimum deal or using some portion of whichever mid-level exception they have access to (room, non-taxpayer or taxpayer).
Mike: Excellent, thanks for clearing that up. I imagine that unless the likes of Paul George, Jrue Holiday, or LeBron opt out and express serious interest in signing with the Sixers, we are more likely to see the type of scenario we discussed previously, where the Sixers either execute a sign and trade or use empty cap space to acquire a star player via trade. Would you agree? Otherwise, you’re left using that ~$30+ million on the likes of DeMar DeRozan, Gordon Hayward, or a few other uninspiring names.
The other potential type of trade the Sixers could look for, which you alluded to in your article that I linked to earlier, would be targeting teams with tenuous long term cap situations that might be looking to essentially salary dump good, young players. You mentioned the John Collins trade from last year as an example of that. Morey’s first James Harden trade back in 2012 was sort of a version of this.
Herb Jones is someone I’ve thought about as a target here, since he was mentioned in some rumors around the deadline, is on a reasonable long-term contract, and the Pelicans have lots of young players they’re going to have to pay. Would you be interested in these types of trades if you’re the Sixers, and are there any other teams or players you have your eye on that might make sense for the Sixers?
Bryan: Morey hasn't explicitly said it anywhere, but I think he's secretly expecting more teams to salary-dump good players this offseason because of luxury-tax and/or second-apron concerns. The Sixers should absolutely be open to pursuing moves like that, especially since those players are likely to come at a steep discount.
The Memphis Grizzlies got a head-start on trimming their tax bill at the trade deadline by dumping Steven Adams for a pair of second-round picks, but I wouldn't be shocked if Luke Kennard ($14.8M club option) winds up on the chopping block. He could be a discount version of Hield if the Sixers aren't able to re-sign Hield for whatever reason.
The Minnesota Timberwolves also have some major financial decisions to make this summer. They aren't going to salary-dump Anthony Edwards or Jaden McDaniels, but I'd imagine they'll shop Karl-Anthony Towns unless they go on a deep playoff run. Towns wouldn't make a ton of sense next to Embiid, but the Sixers could try to wiggle their way into that trade and use their cap space to turn it into a three-teamer.
I'd love Herb Jones in Philly, especially on the extension he signed last year, but the Pelicans might have to think even bigger than that. There's a chance that they'll trade away one of CJ McCollum, Brandon Ingram or Zion Williamson this summer for financial reasons, although I'd be lukewarm on all three for varying reasons. The Atlanta Hawks also appear primed for major changes this offseason, so we could all be revisiting the Bogdan Bogdanovic debate in a few months.
The big thing Morey keeps stressing is that the ability to create $60-plus million in cap space gives him optionality this offseason. If LeBron, PG13 or Jrue wanted to sign with the Sixers, Morey could easily make that happen. If some team is looking to offload a star into salary-cap space, the Sixers will have the flexibility to enable that as well. And if they need to pivot to more of a two-stars-and-depth model, they'll have plenty of ways to round out their roster, whether via free-agent signings, trades or sign-and-trades.
In short: There's no way to guarantee that the cap-space plan is going to work. The Sixers still could strike out this offseason, which would put them in a bad spot. The new CBA effectively forces teams to reach the salary floor (90 percent of the salary cap) by the first day of the regular season, so the Sixers can't go into the 2024-25 campaign with $30-plus million of cap space, hoping to facilitate salary dumps at that deadline.
But as Morey continues to stress, they're going to have far more flexibility than just about any other contender this offseason. And cap space might be more valuable than usual this summer thanks to the new CBA and the full array of second-apron restrictions going into effect
Mike: All good points. Ingram and Williamson are definitely interesting names to consider there. And like you’re getting at, with the new CBA, there could be a couple of teams that emerge that no one is expecting to become sellers. It only takes one team, or one player, for the plan to work out for the Sixers.
OK, one last quick one before we wrap up. Does it seem fairly likely to you that Kelly Oubre won’t be back with the Sixers next year? Given that the Sixers are likely to end up being a tax paying team, and Oubre’s cap hold is just $2.1 million, I struggle to see how the Sixers retain him unless they do so early in their order of operations and use up valuable cap space on him. Otherwise, I have to imagine that someone will pay him more than a minimum or the TPMLE, but you tell me if I’m missing something here that would make it easy for him to re-sign.
Bryan: The Sixers will have non-Bird rights on Oubre, so they could offer him 120 percent of what he's earning this year even if they're over the cap. However, that won't be much more than a minimum contract.
For the reasons you laid out, I'd think it's more likely than not that they won't retain Oubre this summer unless his free-agent market is as frigid as it was last offseason. But if it is, he could follow in Bobby Portis' footsteps and sign a 1+1 deal that would allow him to opt out next summer and cash in via Early Bird rights. (The Sixers could offer him a four-year deal worth more than $50 million in 2025.)
Granted, Portis was fresh off winning a championship with the Bucks when he turned down more money elsewhere to stay in Milwaukee in 2021. The Sixers might need to go on a similarly deep playoff run to get Oubre to re-sign this summer.
Mike: Got it. Well, that’s all we’ve got time for. Thanks a ton for stopping by and giving us your time and expertise, Bryan. This was awesome.