Philly Front Office

Oh man did we need that one today. I know most of us are hardened (poor choice of words) to heart breaking or no-show losses (specifically to Boston), but this win in this season was absolutely necessary. I don’t care if we almost blew it, I don’t care that we needed the game of Caleb Martin’s life, and I really don’t care that they were missing Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingas. For at least one day in this godforsaken season we can feel good.

The dream of tanking is over. We probably can’t win a title but after squinting really hard you can see why not not trying isn’t going to happen either. There is talent here, whether it can reach it’s potential is a different story. We do know this though, the Sixers are going to be legitimate buyers at the deadline…assuming no more catastrophic injuries. Granted, that’s a pretty big assumption, but for at least one day, no pessimism.

Over the next few weeks I’ll have a big break down of who we want and how we might get them. I know it’s Christmas, but no peaking at the presents. For now, here is what we are working with:

Tradable Draft Picks

• 2026 First Round Pick – it’s complicated, but we have two picks and can trade one of them
• 2028 First Round Pick – again we have two (ours and LAC) but we can only trade one of them
• 2029 First Round Pick Swap Rights with LAC
• 2029, 30, 31 First Round Picks – when trading firsts, you can’t empty your stock in consecutive drafts. We can trade one in ’26, ’28, ’29, and ’31 at most.
• Second Round Picks – between ours and others, we have 7 tradable picks between now and 2031

Salary

• KJ Martin – $7.9m he’s been good but is only here to be traded
• Gershon Yabusele – $2m he’s been great, but basically too good to be resigned by us. If an upgrade is available he should go, probably in a 3 team trade.
• Kelly Oubre – $7.9m he’s been awesome but has value that could lead to an upgrade in a 3 team deal
• Andre Drummond – $5m he’s been bad
• Eric Gordon – $3.3m he’s been terrible

For the first time in awhile, we have decent usable assets. To sum up, we have up to 4 firsts and 7 seconds to trade (plus some swap rights). This is more than enough to accomplish our goal of simply making the team better. We aren’t “Star Hunting…for a star” this time. Anyone in the $8m to $15m range that can do any 2 out of 3 of rebounding, shooting, and playing defense is on our radar.

For once this year, we can dream. Thank you Sixers for giving us this one thing, and on Christmas in Boston no less.  Hopefully we have a few more days like this in the coming year.