By now, everybody should know the drill. Today is Monday. Let's begin the week with 5 Sixers thoughts:
Still no news on Quentin Grimes
We are at the point in the offseason where the fact that there has been no news on Quentin Grimes qualifies as the biggest news of the week.
Grimes, 25, remains in the same holding pattern he has found himself in for almost two months. He is a restricted free agent, only one team has ever had the financial bandwidth to propose him an offer sheet that the Sixers might not match, and the Brooklyn Nets continue to focus on other things (more on that later).
The Sixers' offers to Grimes are likely considerably less valuable than what a player of his caliber at his age should receive. But with the right to match any deal Grimes signs with another team comes all of the leverage for the Sixers, who have continually been comfortable letting the situation drag along, even if it is causing some consternation among fans. So, the key word in the first sentence of this paragraph is "should," because Grimes' market value in a vacuum is much different than his value within an unforgiving, barren market.
Grimes could take a massive risk, accept the $8.7 million qualifying offer and set himself up for unrestricted free agency next summer. It would be a brutal scenario for the Sixers, but that does not make it an advisable decision for Grimes. Turning down any substantial multi-year deal in favor of a one-year deal can blow up in the face of a young player whose career earnings in four seasons only amount to about $11 million and has been traded three times. Grimes understands the instability of the NBA from year to year more than just about anyone based on his career arc to this point.
MORE: Is there a deadline for a Quentin Grimes resolution?
Stray schedule notes
I have already written far more about the release of the Sixers' regular season schedule for the 2025-26 season than any sane person should, but I feel compelled to mention a pair of items that have not made it into previous stories about the schedule, which was released last week:
• The Sixers and a few other teams have 16 back-to-backs on their schedule, tied for the most in the NBA. It is a tough break given Joel Embiid's prior statements about never playing in both legs of a back-to-back again. But, thanks to the fine research of Owen Phillips, we have a graphic illustrating that the Sixers are also facing teams on a back-to-back as many times as anyone in the NBA:
For the Sixers' specific purposes, team back-to-backs is a far more important data point than opponent back-to-backs. But the Sixers have a mathematical advantage in a vacuum.
• The Sixers will eventually have two games scheduled between Dec. 9 and Dec. 16. For now, though, they are not expected to even have one lengthy flight until 2026. The longest trip from one game to the next before New Year's Day will be a flight from Brooklyn to Chicago, which is only two hours and change. I cannot remember seeing such a long stretch of limited travel at any point during a team's schedule, let alone right at the beginning.Between their Oct. 22 season opener in Boston and a Dec. 26 road game against the Chicago Bulls, the Sixers' pair of games in Chicago will be the ones taking place the farthest away from Philadelphia among the first 29 contests on the schedule. They will have a flight from Dallas to New York in early January, and nothing comes close to that significant again until February, when the travel really starts to pick up with a trip to the West Coast.
Possible Sixers/Red October overlaps
Days before the NBA schedule was released, MLB's postseason schedule came out. An annual summer tradition for me: finding the overlaps between Sixers games and potential Phillies postseason games. Here is what we've got this year:
Date Sixers Phillies
Oct. 2 @ New York Knicks (preseason, Abu Dhabi) NL Wild Card Game 3
Oct. 4 vs. New York Knicks (preseason, Abu Dhabi) NLDS Game 1
Oct. 17 vs. Minnesota Timberwolves (preseason) NLCS Game 4
Oct. 25 vs. Charlotte Hornets (regular season home opener) World Series Game 2
Oct. 27 vs. Orlando Magic World Series Game 3
Oct. 28 @ Washington Wizards World Series Game 4
Oct. 31 vs. Boston Celtics (NBA Cup Group Play opener) World Series Game 6
The opening game of NBA Cup Group Play and Game 6 of the World Series on at the same time? I am not sure how anybody could parse which one of those will be a bigger deal.
MORE ON 2025-26 SIXERS SCHEDULE
Full breakdown | Four key stretches
A trade that could be relevant to the Sixers
We got a late-offseason trade last week, as the Miami Heat salary-dumped old friend Haywood Highsmith to get under the luxury tax threshold ahead of time. Miami traded Highsmith and a second-round pick to Brooklyn for a top-55 protected second-round pick which is unlikely to convey.
Highsmith figured to have a lesser role with the Heat next season after his minutes fluctuated last year, and Miami was just above the tax line headed into the season. With Highsmith's $5.6 million expiring salary now off their books, the Heat will enter the season clear of any additional financial penalties.
This is a nice piece of business for the Nets, as Highsmith is a rotation-caliber two-way wing on a relatively inexpensive expiring deal. They have a very good chance of flipping him for value closer to the trade deadline after already adding an asset to take him on.
Because of the Sixers' unusual cap sheet – they have three max contracts, an expensive rookie scale deal and a flurry of deals at $5 million or lower – their trade possibilities will be limited even if their season goes well enough to become deadline buyers. They will have to send out as much salary as they take back in any deal to avoid a hard cap at the first apron, which the eventual Grimes contract will take them over. Highsmith now definitively being available for trade in the winter is good news for the Sixers' eventual optionality at the trade deadline if things are trending in the right direction by that time.
Additionally, Brooklyn taking on Highsmith's salary cuts into their remaining cap space, and their ability to give Grimes an offer sheet that threatens the Sixers continues to dwindle. Yossi Gozlan's capsheets.com projects the Nets at about $20 million in space. Again, we still have no indication that Brooklyn will ever even sniff around the Grimes market, but they are the only team that could do so in a meaningful way.
MORE: Who is ideal Sixers trade target if things go well?
Checking in on Adem Bona in EuroBasket
Last week, Adem Bona came off the bench in each of Turkey's friendly matches ahead of EuroBasket. He played about 18 minutes per game across those two games, and playing against a strong team in Germany on Aug. 15 he swatted five shots.
Bona scored 13 points on 4-for-7 shooting across games on Friday and Saturday. A game log of sorts for his second and third appearances with Turkey:
Aug. 15 vs. Germany Aug. 16 vs Czechia
16:49 19:42
7 points 6 points
3-5 FG 1-2 FG
2 rebounds 5 rebounds
5 blocks 1 block
Bona seems ticketed to back up Houston Rockets starAlperen Şengün at center. Will he back up Embiid come October?
MORE: Which Sixers are rotation locks in 2025-26?