The return of BBall Paul: Five reasons the Sixers had no choice but to pay Reed real money
There are plenty of reasons the Jazz offered Paul Reed what they did, and a reason the Sixers had to match. A look at all the ways it makes sense.
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The NBA doesn’t give salary-cap exceptions for the prevention of civic uprisings and the preservation of social order.
This put the Sixers in a tricky spot when they sat down to decide whether they were going to pay Paul Reed $23 million over the next three years. After all, Reed is widely regarded as the most legendary backup center in NBA history by local basketball experts who know real hoopers when they see them. He has spent the past three years thrilling the Sixers fan base with his unique combination of arms, legs, and entrepreneurial spirit. Last season, Reed’s rise from obscurity culminated in a breakout campaign in which he averaged 4.2 points in nearly 11 minutes per game.
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If a team like the Sixers can’t afford to re-sign one of the best 58th overall picks in franchise history, can they even really call themselves a team?
Well, good news. Reed will remain in Philly for at least the next year after the Sixers matched a three-year offer sheet that includes a no-trade provision for the 2023-24 season. The move may seem like a curious one. The Sixers had a lot of big men and an inverse amount of luxury-tax maneuverability. But they also had few other options.
1. The Sixers need all of the controllable young talent and mid-sized contracts they can get.
This is as much a move for two years down the road as it is for next season. Not including Reed, the Sixers faced the prospect of entering next offseason with just four players under contract, one of whom will be 39 years old (P.J. Tucker), another of whom has played a grand total of 95 minutes in two seasons on the roster (Jaden Springer). That would leave them with a lot of cap room to potentially find a star to pair with Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey next offseason, but without many other ways to augment the roster.
Suppose they end up wanting to work a sign-and-trade for a star. First, they’ll need to offer some sort of return to the other team. Second, they’ll need enough salary to match. Having Reed under contract at somewhere in the neighborhood of $8 million could go a long way in facilitating such a deal.
2. Reed could end up having some stand-alone trade value by the end of the contract.
That’s why it made tons of sense for the Jazz to sign him to the offer and to structure the deal in a way that made it as difficult as possible for the Sixers to match. With plenty of cap room and no real plans to contend, the Jazz could afford to invest a little venture capital in a player who could easily build some real trade value with increased minutes.
At 24 years old, Reed has spent the first three years of his career limited by the presence of Embiid and Doc Rivers’ focus on winning every minute of every game. But he has the kind of skill set that every playoff team can use, which Rivers himself understood well enough to give him 14.3 minutes per game in this year’s playoffs.
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At the very least, Reed seems like a safe bet to maintain positive on-court value, especially given that he can play a position (center) where options are scarcest around the league. And, who knows, if Reed can scale up his unique brand of spastic scoring over the course of 20-plus minutes per night, he can become a real asset. It’s the sort of smart allocation of cap space that more rebuilding teams should make. Under Danny Ainge, the Jazz are a smart team.
3. Reed has the potential to develop into a two-way stretch four.
The guy can shoot the rock a little bit. It’s not the prettiest looking thing, but he has a quick release and his ball has good rotation and he works on it a ton. Down in the G League, Reed averaged about four three-point attempts per game and connected on 44% of them. We have yet to see that side of his game emerge in the NBA: He has attempted only 20 and made only three. But there’s at least the possibility, and it’s the exact kind of thing that Nick Nurse and the Sixers should be exploring in a season in which they’ll need to find some creative ways to reinvent themselves without (presumably) James Harden.
4. Reed is the exact kind of weird talent that Nurse thrived with in Toronto.
He has some Chris Boucher and Pascal Siakam qualities in him. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Nurse thinks he can help Reed develop his offensive game to a point well beyond what it is now. Even if he can’t, Reed brings plenty of athleticism and versatility to both ends of the court. Keep in mind, he’s the sixth-most prolific offensive rebounder in NBA history on a per-possession basis among players with at least 1,000 career minutes. Seriously, it goes Jayson Williams (8.4), Jerome Lane (7.8), Dennis Rodman (7.8), Andre Drummond (7.7), Moses Brown (7.7), and Paul Reed (7.5).
5. Pay no attention to the Sixers’ glut of big men.
Yes, they’ve already signed Mo Bamba and Montrezl Harrell. But they always end up with multiple big men throughout the course of a season. They finished last year with Harrell and Dewayne Dedmon. Two years ago, it was Paul Millsap and DeAndre Jordan. I don’t think that’s as big of a deal as some people seem to think.
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The offseason is still young for the Sixers. The roster could still look a lot different in October than it does right now. If Harden is traded, he’ll likely bring back at least one or two veterans. There remains some Tobias Harris uncertainty as well. In Reed, the Sixers had a bird in hand that they could not afford to let go. His track record may not suggest a player worth $8 million per year, but that’s the cost of doing business for a team in their situation.