Happy Draft Day!

The 2026 NBA Draft begins on Tuesday with the first round – where the Sixers are slated to pick at No. 22 overall – before the second round begins on Wednesday.

Ahead of the draft and a full-speed-ahead push towards free agency, the time has come to answer your questions in our weekly Sixers mailbag.

The next time we convene for a mailbag, free agency will be just hours away from tipping off:

From @ykyk226: How do the Jordan Goodwin and Collin Gillespie contracts affect Quentin Grimes?

Over the weekend, the Phoenix Suns utilized their exclusive negotiating window with two soon-to-be free agents and kept their guard rotation in a good place.

First, Gillespie's ascent from two-way player to starting-caliber guard was rewarded with a four-year contract that is expected to look like this:

Then another underdog story, Jordan Goodwin, earned the most significant contract of his career by far:

Grimes is definitively a better player than Goodwin. He has a better track record than Gillespie, but Gillespie, the Villanova product, emerged as one of the single best shooters in the NBA last season and, at the same age as Grimes, should be considered a higher-quality free agent by at least a small margin.

It was somewhat of a surprise that Gillespie had to settle for this much less than the full non-taxpayer's mid-level exception, which for four years is worth about $64 million. And, to be clear, the "exclusive negotiating window" is not exactly exclusive given how rampant tampering is around the NBA. No agent in their right mind would advise their client to sign a deal with their incumbent team without a strong sense for what the external market looked like. If Gillespie could have gotten the full mid-level with another team, he would have known by now and not reached this agreement with Phoenix.

In any case, Gillespie signing for an average annual value of $12 million makes it hard to imagine Grimes getting paid more than that, at least if his deal is also going to run for four years. Would four years and $40 million be enough to retain Grimes? That deal could start or end with a salary as low as $8,928,572, depending on how the Sixers structured the money.

Generally speaking, players willing to take shorter contracts end up with higher average annual values. Could Grimes match Gillespie's $12 million per year on a two- or three-year deal? The answer very well might be yes. Every free agent has different motivations and exists in different contexts, so one-to-one comparisons are never foolproof. But if Gillespie did not have a market near the full mid-level, the Sixers probably do not need to worry about Grimes having one.

From @wh19134: Will Sixers President of Basketball Operations Mike Gansey reach agreements with Grimes or Kelly Oubre Jr. the way Phoenix re-upped Gillespie and Goodwin?

These sorts of deals are pretty rare, usually only a handful of them are signed ahead of June 30. The expectation with any team should always be that the answer to this is no. However, the opening of free agency is certainly close enough at this point that players and their agents should have strong senses of what the offers for their services will probably look like.

The guess here: the Sixers are not so specifically committed to retaining either of Grimes or Oubre that they would feel compelled to work out a deal in advance of those players officially hitting free agency, where their markets could theoretically crater if a few teams drop out of the running. That would enable the Sixers to try to squeeze them into deals that are more team-friendly than anticipated.

MORE: Asking experts which prospect Sixers should draft with No. 22

From @MrEd315: Will the Sixers draft on need or best available?

Gansey has carefully toed the line when asked this question, saying the team will draft a player who is both the best player available and a good fit. That sounds like a good idea!

The Sixers have such clear needs at every frontcourt position that if a forward or center is the highest-ranked player on the Sixers' draft board, the team selecting that player would qualify as fitting a need.

So, the real question is this: what if Gansey's front office believes the best player available is a guard? Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe are the most encouraging aspects of this organization's long-term future by far; any guard the Sixers drafted would have no pathway to being a long-term starter unless one of those players is traded.

And, of course, the elephant in the room is that the Sixers traded Jared McCain for a package of picks headlined by this one – with that same logic applied to exiling the second-year fan favorite to Oklahoma City, where he became a quality rotation piece for the Thunder.

Gansey was not running the Sixers in February. Daryl Morey made the McCain trade; his thinking about investing in a third guard is not necessarily Gansey's rationale, though Gansey is largely working with all of Morey's key lieutenants.

The Sixers drafting a guard would be at least mildly surprising given the makeup of their roster, but the Sixers are nowhere near good enough to be drafting for the sake of filling short-term holes. This is maybe the best draft class in the backcourt in recent memory and there will be legitimate options available when the Sixers are on the clock.

MORE: All things NBA Draft, from trade concepts to prospects of note

From @vivotranquil0.bsky.social: Are you able to go into detail about Prosper Karangwa and his role with the team? Why did this front office extend him? What is his specialty?

Speaking of Morey's lieutenants, Jameer Nelson was not the only one to be prioritized by Gansey as the Sixers did some front-office shuffling. Karangwa, who was reportedly pursued by multiple teams around the NBA, inked a contract extension to stay in Philadelphia – presumably as the team's third-in-line executive behind Gansey and Nelson.

Karangwa has a strong scouting background that has powered his rise throughout the NBA over nearly 15 years as an executive. He has been with the Sixers since 2020.

MORE: Sixers' new front office takes center stage

From @VerySad76erFan: Do you think the Sixers will try to get off of the big contracts at all?

If the draft comes and goes without it happening, the odds will go down quite a bit. The No. 22 pick would be a very helpful asset in any Paul George trade, for example, and while the Sixers could simply trade the rights to the player they drafted later on this summer, those sorts of deals are extremely uncommon.

Barring something unexpected, the assumption should remain that Joel Embiid is not movable as his three-year contract worth nearly $200 million kicks in. And, to be clear, the same might be true for George, still on the books for two years and about $110 million. But given his deal is one year away from being a massive expiring and he remains an extremely portable two-way wing, the nine-time All-Star being dealt is easier to fathom than the former NBA MVP getting traded.

If it was an absolute certainty that the 2027-28 Los Angeles Clippers will be a very bad team, the new lottery format would hurt the value of the unprotected 2028 pick, the primary asset the Sixers acquired in exchange for James Harden. The new system flattens odds significantly, creating more upside for the picks of middle-of-the-pack teams – and less reliability for the picks of bottom-of-the-barrel teams.

That is why, if anything, the new lottery rules should make that Clippers pick – and even the Sixers' right to swap with them the following year – more valuable. The worst teams are no longer shoo-ins on lottery day because every team involved will have at least a puncher's chance.

Nothing is certain in the NBA. Especially as the Clippers have gotten meaningfully younger over the last four months – they traded James Harden for Darius Garland and have the No. 5 overall pick on Tuesday night – the Clippers' medium-term outlook is no longer rudderless. They are still a ways away from being in the sort of position that would make somebody believe that their 2028 first-rounder will be a late pick.

MORE: Sixers trade ideas – some flashy, some not