Philadelphia 76ers May Get Good Deals Out of International Players

The Philadelphia 76ers may be able to use the largely international characteristic of their roster to get some financially positive deals with players.

The Philadelphia 76ers have done a nice job of laying a foundation for the next few seasons. This season, they will ultimately debut Ben Simmons, Joel Embiid, and Dario Saric, all players that are expected to be good-to-great NBA players.

Two of the three of those mentioned rookies are on the first year of their rookie contracts. Since Embiid missed his first two seasons, he only has two seasons remaining, and that’s including this year. Down the road, however, the Sixers are going to have to eventually pay up, and there’s an interesting aspect with the team that may come about thanks to the international aspect of the makeup of the roster.

The Sixers paying their players is not that far off. Both Ersan Ilyasova and Sergio Rodriguez will be free agents this summer, with Nerlens Noel also being a restricted free agent. Then, the year after that, Gerald Henderson and Robert Covington are free agents, and Joel Embiid and Nik Stauskas will be restricted free agents. Two years from now, Jerryd Bayless and Richaun Holmes are free agents.

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So for you keeping track at home of the international players, Ilyasova and Rodriguez are free agents this upcoming summer, Embiid and Stauskas are restricted free agents in the following year, and Dario Saric and Ben Simmons are both restricted free agents in the summer of 2021.

In order for the whole rebuild to be worth it, the Sixers are going to have to bring back a vast majority of their core throughout these free agency summers, and they’re going to finally have to offer players more money than the decent deals they have them on now.

Around the league, however, there is a precedent that may keep the Sixers from having to stress too much during the summer. Often times international players are more likely to take contract extensions while in the early stages of their final year of their contract.

These contract extensions lead to more immediate money for the players, but in the long term most of these players would be better off signing new deals with their current teams to make the most money possible in the long term. More money up front is made, but over the course of the contract, less is made than if the player would defer their possible extension.

So why do players sign them if it’s the less lucrative thing to do long term? There’s a few reasons.

One is job security. Essentially, you go into the final year of your season with peace of mind knowing your summer will be easy and stress free without the worry of contract negotiations. It also allows players to stay away from the pressures of a contract year and focusing more on individual performance than team performance.

This seems to be the case with Russell Westbrook. Westbrook is going into this year angry about Kevin Durant leaving, and took an extension not only to declare his loyalty to the Thunder, but also to focus more on the team doing well this year rather than just himself.

Will Westbrook perform well in his would-have-been contract year? Almost certainly, he would have been playing at max-contract level. But it’s the principal of remaining loyal to a team, and also ensuring that he has security with the Thunder.

If Westbrook didn’t sign his extension, it may have been in the best interest of the Thunder to get rid of Westbrook in return for something that would help them out more in the long run, since Westbrook could have walked this summer without the Thunder getting any repayment. Since they already lost Durant last year, that would have been devastating.

The job security aspect of the extension is, in essence, an all encompassing factor of why any player would take the extension rather than a new contract. For some international players, that job security is too attractive to turn down in return for a possibility of more money in the long term.

This was a factor discussed on The Lowe Post by Zach Lowe with Brian Windhorst. It was talked about how Jonas Valanciunas looked a little bit like he was getting a bad deal with the extension he took with the Toronto Raptors. Windhorst said that he was talking to some people about the deal, and they pointed out that Windhorst isn’t, “from New Zealand.”

The money that is offered to these players in their contract extensions — especially their first ones after their rookie deals — is somewhat alarming, probably numbers that they didn’t even dream of ever having. Many of the international players also come from troubled backgrounds, and their basketball skills are what got them out.

So the first chance at job security with those basketball skills is tempting, especially if a player is content with the team that they’re on.

We saw the same thing happen — as Lowe and Windhorst pointed out — with Steven Adams and Giannis Antetokounmpo.

So, with the Sixers, this could play a major role. Many of their players come from overseas. Joel Embiid is from Cameroon. Dario Saric is from Croatia. Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot is from France.

There’s a lot of international dynamic going on. I would argue that the veteran players who have been acclimated into the NBA and have already negotiated a few deals won’t be susceptible to small deals and contract extensions, just because they already know the drill and already know what to expect. So players like Sergio Rodriguez and Ersan Ilyasova, although still international, may not see the big money up front and the job security and want to jump on it without some sort of other added incentive.

The same could be said for Ben Simmons and Nik Stauskas. Although international players by technicality, both moved to America as high schoolers and therefore have been closer to the NBA and are kind of clear on how the industry works.

But with Saric having a contract “year” (restricted) in the same year as Simmons — who they will almost certainly have to give a max to to keep if things go according to plan — being able to extend him the year before for a lower price could be lucrative.

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Keeping around Embiid appears to be a must for the team moving forward, so the Sixers should be looking to extend him as well this upcoming season.

Additionally, if the Sixers feel either of the stop-gap players in Rodriguez or Ilyasova are good to keep around for longer, they may be able to get better deals with them this summer than they would with their domestic counterparts (but that may be a long shot since they have been around for so long).

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Overall, the Sixers will have to pay these players in order to keep them, and will almost certainly have to pay them all more than they are currently making. That being said, if they can get even one or two of them on nice deals that are smaller than one would expect for those players, or even if they can get one or two on a contract extension rather than a fresh new contract, they could be set up well financially to pursue a big name free agent.