NBA 2025 Offseason Check-In: Philadelphia 76ers

Hoops Rumors is checking in on the 2025 offseason for all 30 NBA teams, recapping the summer’s free agent signings, trades, draft picks, departures, and more. We’ll take a look at each team’s offseason moves and consider what might still be coming before the regular season begins. Today, we’re focusing on the Philadelphia 76ers.

Free agent signings

• Quentin Grimes: One year, $8,741,209. Re-signed using Bird rights. Accepted qualifying offer.
• Justin Edwards: Three years, $7,076,338. Third-year team option. Re-signed using Non-Bird rights.
• Trendon Watford: Two years, minimum salary. Second-year team option. Signed using minimum salary exception.
• Eric Gordon: One year, minimum salary. Re-signed using minimum salary exception. Waived right to veto trade.
• Kyle Lowry: One year, minimum salary. Re-signed using minimum salary exception.
• Emoni Bates: One year, minimum salary. Non-guaranteed (Exhibit 10). Signed using minimum salary exception.
• Kennedy Chandler: One year, minimum salary. Non-guaranteed (Exhibit 10). Signed using minimum salary exception.
• Malcolm Hill: One year, minimum salary. Non-guaranteed (Exhibit 10). Signed using minimum salary exception.
• Igor Milicic: One year, minimum salary. Non-guaranteed (Exhibit 10). Signed using minimum salary exception.
• Saint Thomas: One year, minimum salary. Non-guaranteed (Exhibit 10). Signed using minimum salary exception.
• Marcus Bagley: One year, minimum salary. Non-guaranteed (Exhibit 10). Signed using minimum salary exception.
  • Note: Bagley has since been waived.
• Jaylen Martin: One year, minimum salary. Non-guaranteed (Exhibit 10). Signed using minimum salary exception.
  • Note: Martin has since been waived.

Trades

• None

Draft picks

• 1-3: VJ Edgecombe
  • Signed to rookie scale contract (four years, $50,438,478).
• 2-35: Johni Broome
  • Signed to four-year, $8,685,386 contract. First two years guaranteed. Third year non-guaranteed. Fourth-year team option.

Two-way signings

• Dominick Barlow
  • One year, $85,300 partial guarantee (will increase to $318,218 at start of regular season).
• Hunter Sallis
  • One year, $85,300 partial guarantee (will increase to $318,218 at start of regular season).
• Jabari Walker
  • One year, $85,300 partial guarantee (will increase to $318,218 at start of regular season).

Departed/unsigned free agents

• Jared Butler (Suns)
• Jeff Dowtin Jr. (Maccabi Tel Aviv)
• Jalen Hood-Schifino (unsigned)
• Lonnie Walker IV (Maccabi Tel Aviv)
• Guerschon Yabusele (Knicks)

Other roster moves

• Waived Ricky Council IV (non-guaranteed contract).
• Waived Alex Reese (two-way contract).

Salary cap situation

• Operating over the cap ($154.6MM) and above the luxury tax line ($187.9MM).
• Carrying approximately $194.6MM in salary.
• No hard cap.
• Full non-taxpayer mid-level exception ($14,104,000) available.
• Full bi-annual exception ($5,134,000) available.
• Three traded player exceptions available (largest worth $7,975,000).

The offseason so far

Coming off a massively disappointing year in which the Sixers entered the season as one of the NBA’s title favorites and finished with a 24-58 record, there was some speculation entering the 2025 offseason that the team might look to shake up its roster. President of basketball operations Daryl Morey has never been shy about taking big swings on the trade market, and stars Joel Embiid and Paul George – who combined to make 60 appearances in 2024/25 – suddenly looked like major liabilities on their long-term maximum-salary contracts.

But the reasons the Sixers might have sought to move Embiid and/or George – age, health, and cap concerns – were the same reasons why there was no chance they’d be able to get fair value on the trade market for either player. Even if the club wanted to hit the reset button, it would mean giving up those two stars for pennies on the dollar, perhaps even having to attach assets to get a return of any real value for them.

So instead of a summer of change in Philadelphia, it was one of relative continuity. Neither Morey nor head coach Nick Nurse lost his job after last season’s 24-win showing. Embiid and George didn’t go anywhere. Potential free agents like Kelly Oubre Jr., Eric Gordon, Kyle Lowry, Andre Drummond, and Justin Edwards all either signed new contracts with the 76ers or picked up player options to return to the team.

Even Quentin Grimes‘ restricted free agency – which lasted a full three months and went all the way down to the wire on October 1, the deadline for him to accept his $8.74MM qualifying offer – ended in anticlimactic fashion, as Grimes ultimately did sign that QO. The Sixers reportedly weren’t very aggressive in their efforts to work out a longer-term agreement with the 25-year-old — their best offer to Grimes was said to be for about $39MM over four years, which was never going to get it done after he finished the season by averaging 21.9 points, 5.2 rebounds, and 4.5 assists per game in 28 outings for Philadelphia.

I was a little surprised that the Sixers didn’t try harder to avoid a scenario in which Grimes signed his qualifying offer, which gives him a no-trade clause for the season and lines him up for unrestricted free agency in 2026. But it seems like there were a couple primary reasons why the front office didn’t make it a priority to sign him to a multiyear contract.

For one, after they lucked out in the draft lottery by moving up to No. 3 and hanging onto their top-six protected first-round pick, the 76ers selected standout Baylor guard VJ Edgecombe, adding him to a backcourt that already features Tyrese Maxey and Jared McCain. Theoretically, Grimes can share the court with multiple guards, but at 6’4″, he’s a better fit at the two himself. Philadelphia’s front office may have felt that investing heavily in another guard didn’t make sense when Maxey, McCain, and Edgecombe project to be the club’s top options in the backcourt for years to come.

Getting Grimes back on the qualifying offer is also the most favorable outcome for Philadelphia’s 2025/26 cap, since any multiyear deal or one-year balloon offer would have started higher – and perhaps much higher – than $8.74MM. With that modest figure on their books, the Sixers are operating less than $7MM above the luxury tax line, giving them a potential path to duck below that threshold before the end of the season. Sending out Oubre at the trade deadline and replacing him with a free agent on a prorated minimum-salary contract would do the trick, for example.

You can certainly argue that maintaining the flexibility to get out of the tax shouldn’t be a top priority for a 76ers team that still ostensibly believes it can be a contender. But after the way last season played out, it’s understandable that ownership would want to see how the first two or three months of the season go before deciding whether it’s worth paying luxury tax penalties for this roster.

The Edgecombe pick and Grimes accepting his qualifying offer were the most significant developments of the Sixers’ offseason, but it’s worth highlighting the three-year deal they did with Edwards and the two-year contract they worked out with Trendon Watford, both of which are worth the minimum and feature a team option on the final season.

Edwards was effective in a limited role as a rookie last season, while Watford has been a somewhat underrated role player in Portland and Brooklyn in recent years. It wouldn’t be a shock if one or both of them earn regular minutes in the forward rotation for Philadelphia, and given the modest cost of their respective contracts, they won’t have to do a whole lot to justify the team’s investment.

Finally, while most of the Sixers’ departing free agents weren’t rotation players, the one notable exception was Guerschon Yabusele, one of last season’s most pleasant surprises in his first NBA season since 2018/19. Philadelphia reportedly only offered Yabusele a Non-Bird deal that would have started at 120% of his minimum salary.

Increasing that offer would have required using the taxpayer mid-level exception, which would’ve hard-capped the 76ers at the second tax apron and put them at risk of losing Grimes to an offer sheet. Even then, there’s no guarantee Yabusele would’ve taken Philadelphia’s offer over a similar one from the Knicks that was worth nearly the full taxpayer MLE. Losing Yabusele was unfortunate, but unless the club was OK with losing Grimes instead or had been able to shed salary elsewhere on the roster, it was an outcome that was hard to avoid.

Up next

The Sixers are carrying just 14 players on standard contracts, but as we established above, they’re wary of going too much deeper into tax territory, so they’ll likely leave that 15th spot open to start the regular season.

In two-way players Jabari Walker and Dominick Barlow, Philadelphia is carrying a pair of three-year veterans with 288 combined regular season appearances between them, which will help make up for the lack of a 15th man — either of those guys could play 10 or 15 minutes off the bench if needed. Undrafted rookie Hunter Sallis, the third Sixer on a two-way contract, is less likely to see action at the NBA level immediately.

Gordon and Drummond have been rumored as trade candidates throughout the offseason, but if a deal involving one of them goes down, it’s probably more likely to happen closer to the trade deadline. The emergence of second-year big man Adem Bona will be an interesting development to keep an eye on. If he emerges as a reliable backup center and Embiid can stay relatively healthy (a big if), Drummond would become more expendable.

Assuming the Sixers don’t make any preseason trades or unexpected roster changes, it should be a relatively quiet couple weeks in Philadelphia, since the team doesn’t have any extension-eligible players on its roster.