While the trade deadline is now over, the Philadelphia 76ers still have a long ways to go before they can comfortably bank on their current roster for their goal this season, which has now been admittedly tempered from winning the championship to just going as far as they could in the postseason.
Teams that are 11 games under .500 would normally be slapped with jeers for their audacity to even imagine hoisting Larry come June, but the 76ers are not incentivized to just punt on this season. And even if they wanted to, the amount of raw talent on the roster is still too great to just forsake, especially when they are somehow just 1.5 games away from the playoffs-in tournament picture.
Having said that, the 76ers have barely done anything to advance their supposed winning cause on the trade market. All of their deals were done to either dump cumbersome salaries or retool their draft capital and none of them project to really bolster their current position in the pecking order out East.
The 76ers hold a huge advantage over popular destinations in the buyout market
Front offices will now look forward to the many names that would be available via the buyout market. The trade deadline entailed a bunch of player movement, a lot of which had players getting shoehorned into non-ideal situations, logjams, and pure misfits.
The 76ers will certainly have a lot of competition in the various bidding wars that would unfold, but this time, they hold a big edge. Thanks to a relatively new rule, teams over the first or second tax apron would be disallowed from signing players making north of almost $13 million off the buyout market.
Most of the teams that fall under this category are popular destinations for ring-chasers such as Boston, Denver, Milwaukee, and the Lakers — four of the last five NBA champions, in addition to star-laden squads like Phoenix, New York, and Minnesota. Meanwhile, Dallas and Golden State are almost hard-capped that it would be safe to rule them out of the race.
As a result, Philly should enjoy much less competition this time around, especially if they decide to go after high-end role players making considerable money to help them qualify for the playoffs and actually make some noise starting in April.
The Philadelphia 76ers have been victimized by the new set of league rules this season, especially that of player participation, but this time, the new quirks clearly play to their advantage. Hopefully, the front office can capitalize and make it matter.