Why Ignoring the Second Round of the NBA Draft Results in More Pressure in Free Agency

By Matt Gregan, Sports Talk Philly Staff

Free agency is going to be an important time for the Philadelphia 76ers, and not necessarily for the reason many would think. In addition to the team having to make decisions on key free agents Jimmy Butler, Tobias Harris and JJ Redick, they also will have to worry about making sure they field a complete roster with an improved bench from last season. 

General manager Elton Brand ensured that the 76ers would be heavily reliant on free agency to fill out its roster when he traded away three of the team's four second-round draft picks in Thursday night's NBA Draft.

As of Sunday morning, the team has only five players on its roster. Philadelphia was in desperate need of some more bench scoring as well as an improvement at the backup center position. With a boatload of second-round picks in their cupboard, many believed that the team would be able to address some of these problem areas. However, they came away from the draft with only Matisse Thybulle (see story) and Marial Shayok.

Brand was wheeling and dealing in the second round, trading away three of the team's four picks in the round. He mentioned optionality throughout the week leading up to the NBA Draft, but the consensus among 76ers fans was shock and disappointment when he traded assets in the second round either for second-round picks in future years or just flat out selling the picks in an attempt to save some cap space (the Jonathon Simmons trade saved the team approximately $1 million). 

"Championship aspirations. A lot of young guys, youth movement, I don't see that team winning a championship," Brand said to reporters in his post-draft press conference. "We need flexibility. I need every dollar that I can get. So that's what a lot of those trades was about, making sure we have enough money so we can go into free agency and get the players we need." 

Brand clearly is taking an old school approach to building the 76ers' roster by planning to use free agency to add veteran players to the roster instead of using the draft. He strongly believes that the 76ers, a team with championship aspirations, would benefit more from adding veteran players on cheap contracts through free agency rather than filling out the roster with young, unproven players through the draft. 

Scott Cashin, a self-taught NBA salary cap expert, breaks down how the 76ers can fill out their roster (assuming that they retain Butler, Harris and Redick). 

Given a projected cap of $109 million, the 76ers go into free agency with Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, Zhaire Smith and Jonah Bolden making a guaranteed $40,375,809 in the 2019-20 season.  After accounting for Matisse Thybulle’s $2,578,869 and seven minimum-roster size cap holds of $897,158 each, the Sixers would officially begin the free agency period with $59,765,219 of usable space. 

Given that amount isn’t enough on its own to cover the base year salary of Jimmy Butler, Tobias Harris and JJ Redick, the team would need to retain their rights in order to bring them all back into the fold in the upcoming season.  Those rights come with large cap holds that would eliminate the team from being able to sign a free agent from another team using cap space.  After maxing Butler, the team would be left with $27,962,376 of cap space.  Given this would leave them with insufficient space to fit Harris’s base year salary, the Sixers would use the Bird Rights Exception to exceed the cap and max Harris.  Over the cap at this point, the team could exchange Redick’s Early Bird rights for Non-Bird Rights to enable inking him to a one-year contract worth $10 million.  With the core in back in the fold, the team finds itself with eight players on the roster and an estimated $10,451,208 before hitting the Luxury Tax threshold. 

Elton Brand’s draft day dealings of second rounders indicated he would be filling out the back end of the bench with veterans.  The team would be in a position at this point to utilize the Non-Taxpayer Mid-Level Exception on a pair of players.  A pair of four-year veterans making the minimum along with a pair of 10-plus year, ring-chasing veterans and Shake Milton would leave them $4,696,483 into the Luxury Tax for a total tax bill of $7,044,725 and a total team salary of $144,135,725. 

**All salary cap terms can be defined and have been linked to cbafaq.com

Going the path that Brand is using to fill out the roster makes some sense, because a team with championship aspirations certainly can use some more veteran leadership. 

"For us, I know we can't add five young players to this established team, 50-plus wins two years in a row, a few bounces away from going to overtime and maybe the Eastern Conference Finals and beyond. Five young players wouldn't work for that," Brand said in his post-draft press conference. 

However, going all in on the free agency strategy is a bad idea for the 76ers. With multiple players that could benefit the 76ers bench still being available at their picks in the early and middle part of the second round (Bruno Fernando, Daniel Gafford, Eric Paschall, Admiral Schofield), the team should have kept at least one of the second-round picks that they traded and used it on one of the players available in the draft. 

Brand is putting too much pressure on an already pressure-packed free agency period for the 76ers. He is banking a lot on a combination of veteran players wanting to come and play for the 76ers (a championship contender with "championship aspirations") and getting some value money players in free agency. 

One thing is for sure: the 76ers need to hit on this year's free agency if they are to have a good shot at making it deep in the NBA playoffs. Look no further than the Toronto Raptors, this year's NBA Champions, to see the importance of successfully filling out a NBA roster with role players and veterans. 

"It will make sense soon," Brand said regarding his draft night moves. Free agency begins at midnight on July 1.