Two weeks from today, we will have reached the eve of the Sixers' 2025-26 season opener in Boston.

There remains a whole lot to sort out between now and then.

As always, Tuesday means the time has come for our weekly Sixers mailbag. There is a fair amount of angst among Sixers fans right now, which is not exactly a shock given the disaster that was 2024-25 and the fact that multiple key Sixers are already injured.

Let's see what's on your minds:

From @zteutsch.bsky.social: I am pretty frustrated about the Quentin Grimes result. Do you buy the argument that it is to save Josh Harris money?

I do not believe the Sixers' refusal to make the kinds of offers people anticipated them making Grimes this summer was motivated by the luxury tax. Rather, I believe the idea of a team that is not expected to be a genuine championship contender facing a hefty luxury tax bill is among the reasons the Sixers did not view Grimes taking his $8.7 million qualifying offer as a nightmarish scenario.

As the Sixers see it, they still have the upper hand on retaining Grimes next summer despite his unrestricted status because they will have Full Bird rights. In a perfect world, the Sixers get valuable production from Grimes this year on a cheap salary and then find a way to retain him on a reasonable multi-year deal when he cannot fall back on the qualifying offer. It is much easier said than done -- not just in terms of the market playing out so that Grimes can be had at the numbers the Sixers want, but in terms of convincing Grimes that he should not depart as soon as he can given what transpired this summer and the team's guard depth -- but it is conceivable.

There is no basketball disadvantage to going into the luxury tax; it does not add on any extra roster-building restrictions. But it is extremely rare for a team without legitimate championship aspirations to go deep into the tax, and when teams enter the season just over the tax threshold it becomes the expectation that they will dance under it at the trade deadline to restart the repeater clock (repeat taxpayers face increased penalties).

Like it or not, the Sixers front office could very well feel pressure to work their way below the tax line if their season has not gone well. The Sixers are about $7 million over it right now, which gives them a clear path to ducking the tax. Kelly Oubre Jr. is the most likely casualty, as his $8.3 million expiring salary should be relatively easy to move, while Andre Drummond's expiring deal is worth $5 million if the Sixers need to shed more room as they fill out their roster.

A pet peeve of mine is reporters telling fans what they should and should not be mad at. But here I go: if Sixers President of Basketball Operations Daryl Morey gives up assets to duck the tax this winter -- he sent out a pair of second-round picks to salary dump KJ Martin for tax reasons last trade deadline -- the frustration should not be that he is ducking the tax midseason. The frustration with Morey, at that point, should be that he was unable to build a roster good enough for ownership to feel comfortable going into the tax. When you have two players making well over $100 million combined annually and a third max player joining them, it is almost impossible to build a coherent roster without going into the tax. The Sixers knew this when they embraced the three-star model that many teams are now rejecting.

From @gamatrsoss: Given that Grimes took the qualifying offer, we still have space to give someone the Taxpayer MLE, right? Is there anyone available you think may be worth that? What about Malik Beasley?

Yes.

When Guerschon Yabusele left the Sixers for the New York Knicks, he signed for a hair under the full taxpayer's mid-level exception, which topped out at two years and $11.6 million. The Sixers had the same exception available, but claimed at the time that they could not offer it to Yabusele because using the tax MLE causes a hard cap at the second apron, which could have jeopardized their ability to retain Grimes. It was technically true; the Sixers would have had around $18 million in space below the second apron to keep Grimes without performing any salary dumps. But it was already clear that Grimes had no market near that number.

In any case, Grimes is going to make $8.7 million in 2025-26. While I do not expect this to happen at all, the Sixers could use the tax MLE on a player before the season starts to fill their vacant 15th roster spot and maintain over $7 million in breathing room below their hard cap at the second apron.

More likely ways the tax MLE comes into play for the Sixers, in my view: inflating an offer to a member of the buyout market whose offers from other teams are merely minimum deals or using it as a trade exception, enabling them to take back a player making $5,685,000 or below without sending out any salary.

Beasley, one of the truly elite three-point shooters in the NBA, has always been a player whose markets in free agency have not kept up with his production. There have been off-court concerns with him, and none as great as the one that caused the Detroit Pistons to reportedly back out of a three-year, $42 million pact: Beasley is part of a gambling investigation, and while he has not officially been accused of any wrongdoing, it is enough to keep him on the outskirts of the NBA until the entire situation is resolved.

I am not expecting Beasley to sign anywhere at any point in the near future, and if he did, I would expect him to land with a team that needs guard play and has a better chance to win the title than the Sixers do. There are just not very many minutes available to a 187-pound shooting guard on this team right now.

From @rcrotty.bsky.social: Any bright spots from the first two preseason games?

The Sixers probably need two players out of a group of four forwards -- Justin Edwards and Trendon Watford, plus two-way signees Jabari Walker and Dominick Barlow -- to emerge as rotation-caliber pieces. Edwards has the most cache of the group after what he did in his rookie season with the Sixers, but after a disappointing Summer League, he had a pair of miserable games against the Knicks in Abu Dhabi. Watford did not play as he nurses a nagging hamstring issue, which is not expected to last into the regular season.

Yet, I feel slightly more optimistic about that group producing a pair of rotation pieces now than I did before training camp. It was not that I viewed Barlow as a total long shot, but I felt his chances of earning minutes and/or a standard contract were considerably lower than those of Walker. Instead, they both feel like players with real chances of pulling it off. Barlow was the significant standout of the Sixers' first two official practices; Sixers head coach Nick Nurse praised his activity on the glass and improved shooting among other things. Barlow started both games in Abu Dhabi, and in the second contest he knocked down a pair of corner threes while showing some defensive mobility:

Walker did not produce much offensively in Abu Dhabi, but he has a few things working in his favor -- one is that Nurse views him as an option as a small-ball center because of Walker's stellar rebounding. Walker also made an impressive play, which perfectly encapsulates what he could provide to this team even if his three-point shot never becomes particularly reliable. Walker is not a playmaker by any means, but if used as a screener, he will have opportunities to make decisive passes in 4-on-3 situations because of the blitzes Sixers guards often command:

Some people are sounding alarms on Edwards. I am not yet one of them. This is a two-game sample of missing some open threes he could have easily made; if shooting variance played in his favor instead of against him and he shot the lights out for two games, it would not feel like such a massive development either.

Nurse and his staff developed a massive amount of trust in Edwards during his rookie year because he understands his game and always plays within himself, takes on challenging defensive assignments across the positional spectrum and always makes quick decisions offensively. He does not need to develop into a sniper or a scorer, being a decent spot-up three-point shooter on high volume and occasionally attacking closeouts is more than enough.

While I do not believe Watford being a quality rotation regular is a complete lock like it has been discussed as by some, if I had to predict how the season goes for Watford, I would guess that more often than not he will be one of the team's nine best players. I expect him to be paired with his close friend Maxey, whose off-ball talents can once again be weaponized.

Perhaps none of Edwards, Watford, Walker and Barlow are long-term starters in the NBA. But if two of them can prove capable of holding down bench spots this season, the Sixers will have a much easier time piecing together a rotation that often hinges on injury-prone players.