Philadelphia 76ers will have to rely on young bench beyond this season

The Philadelphia 76ers have a great core moving forward, but there’s only one real way they can build their bench moving forward.

The trades that brought in Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris this season have given the Philadelphia 76ers one of the best starting fives in the NBA. With both players set to be free agents, along with J.J. Redick and Ben Simmons‘ rookie extension coming up, the Sixers will have to pay a hefty price to keep everyone in town.

Harris and Butler are worth near max if not max contracts. For perspective, this season max contracts for players that had been between seven to nine seasons are worth about $30,560,700 for one season. That’s over $61 million per season for two players for a salary cap at $101.869 million for this season.

Next season, the salary cap is projected to be at around $109 million according to Shams Charania of The Athletic. Which means that their contracts would still take a good portion of the salary cap, because as max players, they would get 30 percent of the salary cap.

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Simmons will demand a max rookie contract extension this summer as well, so expect that to eat up around 25 percent or 30 percent of the salary cap. Joel Embiid‘s rookie extension will be on the books for next season at $27,270,000 with it increasing each year until it ends. Assuming Butler and Harris return and get near max if not max contracts along with Simmons and Embiid’s rookie extentions, the Sixers will use almost all of their salary cap to keep those four players.

That’s not including Zhaire Smith and Jonah Bolden on the salary cap for next season as well. Jonathon Simmons has a partially guaranteed contract and James Ennis has a player option that he could exercise too. That will leave little to no cap space to sign or re-sign free agents.

Hopefully players like Redick, T.J. McConnell, Mike Scott and Boban Marjanovic will sign for less than their market value, but the Sixers can’t count on that. Even if those player do re-sign, the franchise can’t expect all free agents to sign cheaply, especially quality free agents. The Sixers will have to find quality bench help elsewhere.

One place the Sixers could get quality talent at is the NBA draft. In this draft alone, Philly has one first round pick and three second round picks. The Sixers also have a treasure trove of picks for the coming years. If the Sixers can hit on their first and second round picks, then they will be able to get quality rotation players at minimal expense.

The down part to this, of course, is that there will be the lack of experience on the bench. While it wouldn’t be unfamiliar territory for head coach Brett Brown, it’s not ideal for a championship contender to have a bench full of inexperienced players. However, Brown’s good with player development, so hopefully it won’t be as big of a weakness as it could be.

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With the intention of bringing back the new core, the Philadelphia 76ers will be in trouble with the salary cap moving forward. While ownership is fine with paying the price, finding talent to surround that core will have to come primarily through the draft for the upcoming years.