When James Harden picked up his $35.6 million player option and requested a trade to the Los Angeles Clippers in late June, the Sixers were working with a relatively blank palette. After losing Georges Niang, Jalen McDaniels and Shake Milton in the opening hours of free agency, they had only nine players under contract (including Harden), which made it easy to come up with a viable 3-for-1 or 4-for-1 framework.
With two weeks to go until the start of the regular season, that’s no longer the case. The Sixers signed a bevy of free agents to one-year, minimum-salary deals throughout the offseason, including Patrick Beverley, Mo Bamba and Kelly Oubre Jr.