The Sixers’ preseason opener was the textbook definition of a glass-half-full, glass-half-empty night.
The glass-half-full: Jaylen Brown scored 22 points in 15 minutes. VJ Edgecombe couldn’t buy a bucket from deep, but he chipped in a well-rounded 12 points, seven assists and four rebounds in only 20 minutes of action. Even Jabari Walker shined with 11 points and 11 rebounds in 19 minutes off the bench.
The glass-half-empty: The Sixers’ depth at backup center behind Joel Embiid, which already looked
flimsy with Adem Bona nursing a foot injury, took another major hit when Ariel Hukporti went down with a torn Achilles only five minutes into the game.
The Sixers spent part of their bi-annual exception to sign Hukporti to a one-year, $3.4 million contract this offseason. Losing him is a blow on multiple fronts, particularly since they don’t have an easy way to replace him.
The Sixers do still have one open standard roster spot, but they’re hard-capped at the $209.0 million first apron. They’re only $1.8 million below that line at the moment, which means they don’t have enough room under the first apron for a veteran-minimum contract for anyone with even a single year of NBA experience. If they wanted to sign someone now, it would have to be an undrafted rookie free agent. That’s not exactly what the doctor ordered for the win-now Sixers.
Minimum contracts begin to prorate downward once the regular season begins, so the Sixers will be able to fill that last roster spot with a free-agent signing starting on Dec. 3. However, they might prefer to keep that spot open until the trade deadline to give themselves some additional flexibility for an in-season addition.
If so, they’ll need to explore alternate ways to replace Hukporti for now.
The easiest would be a two-way contract. The Sixers still have one open two-way spot, and they have 7’6″ center Tacko Fall in training camp on an Exhibit 10 deal. However, Fall is currently nursing a hip strain and is not expected to be reevaluated until mid-October, so he might not be ready for opening night, either.
As other teams begin to trim down their rosters to the 15-man regular-season limit, the Sixers could look to poach someone who gets waived. Their pro scouting department should be working overtime for the next few weeks as they figure out how best to fill that open two-way spot heading into the season.
The Sixers could also explore a trade for a backup big, although their options are fairly limited in that regard for now. Anyone whom they signed this summer is not eligible to be traded until at least Dec. 15 (including Hukporti), so their best options would be moving Dominick Barlow ($3.4 million), Walker ($2.6 million) or Justin Edwards ($2.4 million). They can take more salary than they send out in a trade since they’re under the first apron, but they can’t exceed the first apron under any circumstance. (What are the odds they could pry Jay Huff’s $2.7 million contract away from the Indiana Pacers…?)
If Hukporti is confirmed to be out for the season, the Sixers could apply for a Disabled Player Exception, although it wouldn’t do them much good. It would be worth 50% of Hukporti’s contract, or $1.7 million, which means they could only use it to sign an undrafted rookie free agent or a prorated veteran-minimum deal. If they wanted to use it as a trade exception instead, they couldn’t take back more than $1.8 million (the value of the Disabled Player Exception plus $100,000).
Lastly, they could waive Walker, who has only $250,000 of his $2.6 million contract guaranteed until Jan. 10. If they waive him and sign someone else to a one-year, veteran-minimum deal in his place, they’d add about $100,000 to their books in total, but they’d still be $1.7 million below the first apron. That would leave them enough flexibility to still add someone else mid-season on a prorated minimum contract, although they’d have to wait until roughly mid-December to do so.
To put it lightly, the Sixers don’t have a ton of great options to replace Hukporti right now. If Bona hasn’t recovered from his foot injury by opening night, the Sixers will not have a single healthy backup center behind Embiid. Perhaps they plug the gap with a two-way signee, but they’ll otherwise have to experiment with small-ball 5 looks until Bona returns.
In the games that Embiid sits out, the Sixers’ center rotation is even more of a question mark moving forward. Bona and Hukporti figured to split a majority of the minutes on those nights, but that’s no longer on the table. Head coach Nick Nurse will need to break out his mad-scientist cap and figure out a way to patch a center rotation together. Barlow, Walker and Dean Wade all might wind up playing some minutes at the 5.
Hukporti’s injury is by no means a death knell to the Sixers’ title chances this year, but it shouldn’t be downplayed, either. Until the Sixers figure out a way to patch that hole in their rotation, they’ll be vulnerable in the frontcourt, particularly given Embiid’s lengthy injury history.
Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac and salary-cap information via RealGM.
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