Should the Sixers Have Interest in a Guerschon Yabusele Trade?

Almost nothing went right for the Sixers last season. Guerschon Yabusele was one of the few exceptions to that rule.

After spending five years overseas, Yabusele earned his way back into the NBA with a dynamic performance for Team France during the 2024 Paris Olympics. The Sixers wound up signing him to a one-year, veteran-minimum contract in late August, and he rewarded them by averaging a career-high 11.0 points, 5.6 rebounds and 2.1 assists in 27.1 minutes per game.

Yabusele parlayed that breakout year into a two-year, $11.3 million contract with the New York Knicks this past offseason. Unfortunately, his time in New York hasn't been nearly as fruitful as his 2024-25 campaign with the Sixers was. He's averaging only 3.0 points and 2.2 rebounds in 9.6 minutes per game this season with the NBA Cup champions. (The Cup title did earn him a cool $530,000-plus bonus, at least.)

According to James Edwards of The Athletic, "the loudest league chatter about the Knicks is that they are open to trading" Yabusele. However, multiple league executives told Edwards that the Knicks might have "to attach something to Yabusele in order to have a chance to move him" before the Feb. 5 NBA trade deadline.

Given how he fared for them last year, should the Sixers be interested in a reunion with Yabusele? It's complicated.

Sixers' new PFs reduce need for Yabu

Sixers president Daryl Morey said he would have liked to re-sign Yabusele this offseason, but he fell victim to a numbers game.

Since Yabusele was only signed to a one-year deal, the Sixers only had non-Bird rights on him. That meant they could offer him no more than 120 percent of his previous salary or a minimum salary as the starting salary of his next contract. Otherwise, they'd have to use a different salary-cap exception to re-sign him.

The Sixers did—and still do!—have access to the $5.7 million taxpayer mid-level exception, which is exactly what the Knicks used to sign him in free agency. The Sixers weren't comfortable offering him that amount since doing so would have hard-capped them at the $207.8 million second apron. That would have limited how much they could have matched if Quentin Grimes signed a bloated offer sheet in restricted free agency.

Knowing how the offseason played out—with Grimes instead accepting his $8.7 million qualifying offer—the Sixers had plenty of room under the second-apron hard cap to re-sign Yabusele, in retrospect. However, his departure forced them to go bargain-hunting at power forward, and they hit a trio of home runs in that department. They landed Trendon Watford on a two-year, veteran-minimum contract and signed both Dominick Barlow—who just made an appearance on ESPN's "NBA All-Value Team"—and Jabari Walker to two-way deals.

Injuries have limited Watford to only 14 games this season, but Barlow and Walker have both made a huge impact for the Sixers. The question is whether the Sixers will convert either (or both) of them to a standard contract by the end of the regular season. Otherwise, they wouldn't be eligible to play in the playoffs.

Since the Sixers still have the taxpayer MLE in their back pocket, they could technically acquire Yabusele using that as a trade exception without having to send any salary out. However, the value of the taxpayer MLE will begin to decrease by nearly $33,000 per day starting on Jan. 10, so the Sixers won't have a huge window in which they could pull off such a move. They'd have to do so by Jan. 15 or they wouldn't be able to absorb Yabusele's $5.5 million salary into the prorated taxpayer MLE.

Yabusele has a $5.8 million player option for the 2026-27 season as well. If the Sixers believe they can retain either Barlow and/or Walker for less than that—and that either or both of them would provide a similar impact to Yabusele—they'd be better off just converting them from a two-way deal to a standard contract.

If both Barlow and Walker play hardball in contract negotiations, that could incentivize the Sixers to revisit Yabusele as a possibility. But given the likelihood that they'll want to maintain an open roster spot and their taxpayer MLE to preserve their optionality at the trade deadline, a reunion likely isn't in the cards.

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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