For 85 days, Quentin Grimes' restricted free agency was the center of the Sixers' offseason, yet there was zero public information about negotiations between Grimes and the Sixers, any other teams interested in acquiring the 25-year-old guard, and when a deal could get done.

On the 86th day of Grimes' first journey to the NBA's open market, some sense of where things stand between the Sixers and their prized acquisition from last season's trade deadline finally emerged.

Since June 30, the two sides have been in a common NBA standoff: a restricted free agent looking around at other young players in the league with significant new contracts versus a team looking to exert its leverage in a process designed to damage that player's earning abilities.

ESPN's Shams Charania first reported some news about Grimes on Wednesday afternoon, and some additional information has since trickled out. A breakdown of where things stand:

Shams Charania's report

The Sixers hold their Media Day on Friday, and on Sunday they will board a flight to Abu Dhabi for a pair of exhibitions against the New York Knicks. According to Charania, Grimes will not be with the team for either of those preseason checkpoints. His full reporting:

All along, Grimes accepting the qualifying offer has appeared to be the worst possible outcome for the Sixers. No team has ever presented itself as a serious threat to ink Grimes to an offer sheet the Sixers would not happily match; losing him for nothing this summer has never felt like a risk. But Grimes taking the qualifying offer would very possibly void the Sixers' ability to utilize him as a long-term, controllable asset.

After Charania's reporting and some additional information coming to light in the wake of it, it is a bit easier to realistically outline the options facing Grimes and the Sixers:

Option #1: $8.7 million qualifying offer

Teams must extend qualifying offers to potential restricted free agents to give themselves right of first refusal on offer sheets. The exact value of each player's qualifying offer depends on how much they played in the year prior; Grimes' two-month run as a starter for the Sixers helped him meet a higher criteria than Brooklyn Nets guard Cam Thomas, who accepted his qualifying offer worth about $6 million.

Grimes clearly wants to sign a multiyear deal for more than double this figure annually. Why would he accept a one-year, $8.7 million deal? The answer: it gives him control. The qualifying offer comes with a no-trade clause and the right to enter unrestricted free agency the following summer. It is why it has been viewed as the nightmare scenario for the Sixers. The benefit of having a restricted free agent is controlling the situation and being able to leverage that power into securing a cost-effective long-term deal.

If Grimes takes his qualifying offer, the Sixers would maintain his Bird rights, enabling them to offer him a better contract than anyone else when he became an unrestricted free agent. But given the team's loaded backcourt – Tyrese Maxey, Jared McCain and VJ Edgecombe should all be bigger priorities moving forward than Grimes – and two other massive contracts on the books in Joel Embiid and Paul George, it stands to reason that in a more traditional market than the barren one Grimes had to enter this summer, he would fetch offers above what the Sixers would be willing to pay.

The most likely long-term outcome after Grimes taking the qualifying offer is that he plays out the season with the Sixers and then departs via unrestricted free agency next summer. But it is not the only possible outcome; the team could re-sign or sign-and-trade Grimes in 2026 with their Bird rights.

It is also not impossible for the Sixers and Grimes to align their interests with a midseason trade, helping the Sixers recoup value for a good player and putting Grimes in a situation where his long-term ceiling in terms of playing time is substantially higher. However, if a player takes the qualifying offer and then approves a trade their Bird rights do not travel to their new team. It would be a challenge to craft a deal that satisfies Grimes, the Sixers and the team Grimes is being sent to, but it would not be inconceivable.

If Grimes takes the qualifying offer, it will happen soon. His deadline to pick it up is Oct. 1; he would remain a restricted free agent beyond that date if he does not pick it up. According to Tony Jones of The Athletic, Grimes' camp proposed pushing that deadline back by a week to Oct. 8, giving the sides more time to figure out a deal with the player-friendly fallback option: 

Do not expect the Sixers to honor this request. Grimes taking the qualifying offer is the outcome they have spent their entire summer hoping to avoid. The team giving Grimes an extension to put pen to paper on the qualifying offer is difficult to fathom. That means the Sixers have until Wednesday to convince Grimes that their best offer represents a better path than the qualifying offer.

Option #2: One-year balloon deal

At this point, the Sixers' best chance of avoiding a qualifying offer appears to be via a larger one-year deal. Bird free agents that sign one-year deals have the right to a no-trade clause, but that can be waived by the player. So, the concept here: the Sixers give Grimes more money on a one-year deal than he would make via the qualifying offer, and in return Grimes waives his right to veto any trade.

The Sixers would remain capable of moving Grimes and getting some sort of long-term value in exchange for him. Possible trade partners would have more interest in Grimes, as they could attain his Bird rights. With Grimes' salary at a considerably higher number, the Sixers' capacity to match money in possible trades would grow significantly. Grimes would cede control of his tradability but remain on course to enter unrestricted free agency in 2026 and make considerably more money than he would on the qualifying offer, getting to a figure closer to what he had been hoping for on a multiyear deal.

If the sides are truly as far apart on a longer-term deal as the Sixers believe is the case, and Grimes is legitimately willing to take the qualifying offer – he would not be the first player or the last player to use it as a tool to threaten a team into increasing its offer, fail and then cave at the 11th hour – this is probably the best realistic outcome for the Sixers.

How much money would it cost the Sixers to essentially buy the right to trade Grimes at their own discretion? Perhaps a better framing of the question: how much money would Grimes be willing to give up for the right to block a potential deal?

If Grimes' primary ambition remains hitting a more open version of the open market next summer and truly feels the Sixers' long-term offers are insufficient, this option should be the most appealing one at this point. A no-trade clause is probably not as valuable to Grimes as it might be to other players if his goal is just to find a place where he has a chance to stick as a long-term starter.

He projects to start in Philadelphia now regardless of the team's last two first-round picks being McCain and Edgecombe, though him being able to hold onto that role is questionable. Perhaps the best of both worlds at this point would be making some extra money on a one-year deal, starting to open the year, being traded midseason and locking in a long-term role he desires with the team that acquires him or via unrestricted free agency in the summer.

How much money makes sense for such a balloon deal? The Sixers could give Grimes as much money as they want, but that would not be within reason. With 13 players under contract, the Sixers have about $21.7 million in room below the NBA's punitive second apron. Exceeding that should be a nonstarter.

One idea: the Sixers give Grimes $18.7 million for one year and he waives his no-trade clause. It gives Grimes an extra $10 million versus what he would have made on the qualifying offer and keeps the Sixers under the second apron with more than enough room to eventually sign a 15th player.

If the Sixers could keep Grimes at $16 million or below, they would theoretically be able to use their full taxpayer's mid-level exception for that final spot. Would a bump of $7.3 million be enough for Grimes, who has only made about $11 million in his four NBA seasons, to give up the no-trade clause?

Ultimately, the critical component in all of this – one that nobody truly knows – is how much Grimes and his camp will value the ability to veto a trade. If the answer is a whole lot, the Sixers could have trouble coming to terms on a balloon deal without messing up their own cap sheet. But if that short-term pay raise appeals to a player whose financial earnings have been relatively limited so far, this will clearly be the most viable path.

Option #3: Sign-and-trade

Charania does mention the idea of a sign-and-trade involving Grimes, but such a deal would be tremendously difficult to pull off this late into the offseason. There are hard caps associated with both sides of any such deal and most teams have already filled out their rosters by now.

At this juncture, absolutely nothing can be ruled out. It is easy to imagine other teams registering some level of interest in adding a young guard with a strong array of two-way skills, and if the Sixers do hammer out a deal with Grimes it could very well be done to facilitate a future trade. But PhillyVoice learned on Wednesday that the team's focus remains signing Grimes to a contract that keeps him a member of the Sixers heading into the 2025-26 season.

Option #4: Multiyear contract

If a player is on a team-friendly contract, having him secured for multiple seasons is a massive asset. Every team is coveting cost-effective production, especially in a much stricter salary cap environment. But it is a double-edged sword: if a player is not worth his salary, the longer the deal runs the harder it will be to generate value from it, on the court or in a trade.

Clearly, the optimal outcome for the Sixers is locking Grimes into a deal with both a team-friendly average annual value and a longer duration. But if the price point is not one the team believes is worthwhile for the player, it is always better to keep the contract shorter.

So far, the Sixers seem to believe keeping Grimes on a multiyear deal at the kind of money it would take opens them up to greater risk of having bad money on their books. Given they already owe max money to Joel Embiid, Paul George and Tyrese Maxey – and only the last of those three would be considered a good contract right now – there is very little margin for error when it comes to financial commitments on the Sixers' end.

The only path to a multiyear deal, it seems, is Grimes caving at the final minute. Perhaps he feels what has been written here before: taking the qualifying offer is too risky of a gambit, and ultimately even taking a three- or four-year deal below his market value would be better than running the risks associated with a one-year, $8.7 million pact. Even then, it would not be an outrageous idea to bluff and see if the fear of the qualifying offer at least prompts the Sixers to nudge their multiyear contract offers up a bit.

Only Grimes and the people around him know what he wants. In the next week or so, everyone else should be finding out, too.

SIXERS PLAYER PREVIEWS

Jared McCain | Justin Edwards | VJ Edgecombe | Kyle Lowry

Kelly Oubre Jr. | Johni Broome | Adem Bona | Andre Drummond

Trendon Watford | Eric Gordon | Quentin Grimes

Paul George | Tyrese Maxey | Joel Embiid