Over the last three weeks, the Sixers have won their bet on cap space and financial flexibility in a salary cap environment that discourages such gambles.
The team signed Paul George to be its third star alongside Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey and brought back its most important free agent in Kelly Oubre Jr. before adding Caleb Martin to round out its starting lineup as well as Andre Drummond to solidify its backup center position. They did all of this while also being able to give KJ Martin a balloon deal that makes him a viable trade asset when the team inevitably looks to upgrade its roster during the winter.
The Sixers have two or three more players to sign to their NBA roster between now and training camp, but the core of their team appears to be set in stone — giving head coach Nick Nurse all he needs to craft a dominant rotation.
Sixers President of Basketball Operations Daryl Morey and his front office made a calculated wager that creating more financial maneuverability than any team with two All-Stars has had in recent NBA history would pay off, and ultimately, the team maximized every penny of their cap space en route to a significant roster overhaul.
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But no offseason plan is executed with just the following regular season in mind. There are many future seasons to ponder with every move, particularly the massive long-term commitments like the four-year pact the Sixers agreed to with George. So, while the team's 2024 offseason will be remembered for the enormous amount of spending power the Sixers armed themselves with, this will not become the norm.
The Sixers' exact payroll heading into 2025-26 will not be easy to quantify until the end of the upcoming season, as they could very well trade for someone under contract for 2025-26 during the upcoming season. To some extent, it is out of their hands, as Oubre, Drummond and Eric Gordon all have player options for the season following next.
With three max contracts on their books for the foreseeable future, the Sixers are not looking at having cap space at any point in the next handful of seasons (nearly every contending team can say the same). They will have veteran's minimum contracts at their disposal next summer as well as some form of the mid-level exception. Given their cap standing, the extremely likely scenario is that they have access to the taxpayer's MLE, which is not nearly as advantageous to have available as the non-taxpayer's version, but has enough value to net a rotation player of some kind.
NBA salary cap expert Yossi Gozlan projects the tax MLE to be worth $5,685,000 in 2025-26, with a maximum five percent raise up to $5,969,250 in a second season that can be offered. That means the most lucrative contract offer the Sixers could make another team's free agent next summer will likely be a two-year, $11.6 million deal.
It may be too early to have any strong inclinations about what next summer's free agent market will look like, but it is never too early to speculate about what could materialize. With that being said, here are three potential free agents who the Sixers could target next summer:
Dennis Schröder
Schröder is likely out of the question as a trade target for the Sixers for the time being with Kyle Lowry back in the fold and the team's backup point guard slot stabilized. But Lowry will be 39 years old by the time the upcoming season is over and Jared McCain profiles as an off-ball player rather than an on-ball creator, so the team could very well be back in the market for a point guard next summer.
In 80 games (58 starts) with the Toronto Raptors and Brooklyn Nets last season, Schröder had a sneakily strong season. In 31.1 minutes per game, the German veteran averaged 14.0 points, 6.1 assists and 3.0 rebounds on the second-best efficiency of his career (37.5 three-point percentage, 55.0 true shooting percentage).
Schröder, who will be entering his age-32 season in 2025-26, has fully embraced the role of pest as a defensive player in recent years, becoming a significant deterrent for opposing ball-handlers. He frequently picks up point guards in the backcourt and defends them across all 94 feet of the floor. His newfound defensive proficiency combined with his offensive capabilities would make him one of the league's best backup point guards should he be asked to fill that role for a contending team.
Bojan Bogdanovic
Like Schröder, Bogdanovic is on Brooklyn's roster at the moment but could be traded during the season (if not much sooner).
The Sixers have seen a lot of the veteran wing; he has scored at will against them as a member of the Detroit Pistons in recent years and battled them in the first round of last season's NBA Playoffs after being traded to the New York Knicks.
The primary concern with Bogdanovic is obvious: he will be 36 years old entering 2025-26, and already has a lengthy injury history. But of the players definitively under contract for the Sixers in that season, most do not provide any sort of secondary scoring ability off the bench. Bogdanovic could offer the occasional self-created basket with a ton of spot-up three-point shooting that makes life easier for the trio of Maxey, George and Embiid.
In 28 games (27 starts) with Detroit last season, Bogdanovic averaged 20.2 points per game while shooting a ridiculous 41.5 percent from beyond the arc on 7.4 long-range attempts per contest. When he was dealt to New York, his minutes and production predictably dropped, but he was still a very useful offensive player.
Trey Lyles
Much has been made of the Sixers' lack of traditional power forwards, and in a year's time, Lyles could help fill that gap if it still exists. He is a prototypical stretch four who has thrived with the Sacramento Kings who has enough size and rebounding that the thought of him sliding up to the five in a pinch is not outrageous.
Now that the Kings have added DeMar DeRozan on a lucrative contract that is fully-guaranteed for both this upcoming year and the following season, a team that has long resisted paying the luxury tax could let Lyles walk as a cap casualty of sorts.
Lyles, who will turn 30 years old early in the 2025-26 season, would not be a heavy-minutes player for a hopeful contender like the Sixers, but the Canadian veteran would offer his services as a strong rotational piece off the bench. Over the last two seasons in Sacramento (132 games), Lyles has played 18.2 minutes per game, averaging 7.4 points and 4.2 rebounds while shooting 37.3 percent from beyond the arc on 3.5 three-point attempts per game.
Embiid has long enjoyed playing with traditional stretch fours, dating back as far as to his time with Ersan Ilyasova. Lyles is in a somewhat similar mold and could help the Sixers if they opt to eventually add a more traditional power forward.
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