February 12, 2026
Between two brutal losses before the All-Star break, a trade universally hated by Sixers fans and the team's complete failure to add to its rotation at the trade deadline, there has been quite a bit of angst around these parts over the last week.
Predictably, that led to plenty of questions about where exactly the 2025-26 season is heading for this team. With no games to watch for the next week, why not put an extra mailbag together this week?
If you missed our typical Tuesday mailbag, which explored the trade value of the first-round pick the Sixers acquired for McCain using recent draft trades, Quentin Grimes' future with the team and Paul George's eventual return from suspension, you can find it here.
Let's dive into the bonus mailbag:
From @illadelph_son: What happens now if one of Tyrese Maxey, VJ Edgecombe or Quentin Grimes misses time? Are we seriously one ankle turn or sickness away from Kyle Lowry getting 20 minutes a night?
Very soon after this question was submitted, Grimes missed two games due to an illness. What happened? On Monday in Portland, Kyle Lowry played 18 minutes as the Sixers fell apart in the second half against the Trail Blazers. Two-way swingman MarJon Beauchamp also made his Sixers debut off the bench; Lowry and Beauchamp worked in tandem to replace Grimes' on- and off-ball responsibilities. On Wednesday, head coach Nick Nurse staggered Maxey and Edgecombe rigidly, and when Edgecombe was on the floor without Maxey the Sixers went bigger. It made them better defensively, but left the 20-year-old rookie on his own to orchestrate offense without secondary ball-handling. That went as poorly as one would expect.
This is, in a nutshell, the ultimate failure of the Sixers' inactivity at this year's deadline: they are a worse team now than they were nine days ago.
It is not as if Jared McCain had given the team steady guard minutes. But after months of struggles, he turned a corner in his final days as a member of the team and has continued that progress while seamlessly blending into the best team in the NBA. The Sixers discarding McCain and replacing him with a viable bench guard would not have drawn rave reviews, but at least the Sixers would have been able to credibly claim their present-day roster is better than it used to be ahead of a playoff run. Now backfilling McCain's spot – or upgrading any other part of Nurse's rotation – makes it impossible to claim the Sixers are not less talented than they used to be.
It was far from an inevitability that McCain's current breakthrough was going to stagnate with the Sixers. But even if it did, he would have been a considerably better piece of depth than Lowry, Beauchamp or anyone else the Sixers can reasonably ask to play off their bench right now. He was, at his worst, an insurance policy for not just Maxey and Edgecombe as they handle obscenely large workloads, but also Grimes. Now, the Sixers have no safety net behind that trio of players in the backcourt.
But can they still find one?
From @tickiedhon: Who do you think they will get in buyout market? Could they get more than one guy (wing and a ball-handler)? And do you see any other players being added to the buyout market who haven’t been waived yet the Sixers might have interest in?
The Sixers can get more than one player in the buyout market; they have two roster spots that will soon be open for rest-of-season contracts. Last week, Sixers President of Basketball Operations Daryl Morey said that the team will always try to sign the best players it can, but the best thing for "roster balance" would likely be adding a guard and a wing. That would leave Jabari Walker out of the mix, though; Walker is more of a small big than a big wing but has been a very helpful piece on his two-way contract. The Sixers will not be able to use Walker again this season unless they give him a standard contract.
Immediately after the trade deadline passed, work started on this story, detailing many of the most intriguing and/or realistic midseason additions off the buyout market. Many of them still remain: Haywood Highsmith and Lonzo Ball are the best names still on the board for the Sixers, old friend Georges Niang has not been bought out yet but very well could be. Meanwhile, options like Mike Conley (soon to return to the Minnesota Timberwolves) and Cam Thomas (signed with the Milwaukee Bucks) are off the table.
Given all of the facts detailed in the first answer, it stands to reason that another player capable of handling the ball at either guard position would be a priority. Ball has had a dreadful season, but could be a strong option because he fits that billing and would give the Sixers a much-needed extra option on the wing defensively.
For what it's worth, a few more names have emerged in recent days of potential late entrants into the market. A pair of guards with plenty of NBA experience likely to become available: Cole Anthony, who after being traded from Milwaukee to the Phoenix Suns has yet to report to the team, and D'Angelo Russell, extremely likely to hit the market after heading from the Dallas Mavericks to the Washington Wizards as salary filler in the Anthony Davis trade.
Anthony, 25, has rarely been efficient in his NBA career, but is a classic microwave scorer with tons of energy who can get hot on any given night. He is listed at just 6-foot-2 and 185 pounds; he is likely not a viable playoff rotation player but could step in for occasional rotation cameos and serve as a change-of-pace sort of player.
Russell, who will turn 30 years old later this month, fell out of favor rather quickly in Dallas, in part because of a bizarre decline in three-point accuracy. Russell has been inconsistent for much of his NBA career, but the one constant was that he was a productive long-range shooter. Across the first nine years of his career, Russell shot 36.9 percent from beyond the arc on significant volume. Since the start of last season, he is shooting 30.9 on three-point tries. If the Sixers deem Russell's recent shooting decline as a fluke, perhaps he is a stronger option than Anthony given his size advantage and easier ability to slide into an off-ball role.
Anthony, Russell and any other player the Sixers could target on the buyout market will not be perfect. None of those players will be sure things to help the Sixers in the regular season or the playoffs. Those players are the ones teams have to trade assets for.
