Sixers Headed Toward a Roster Crunch With Their Two-Way Players

One-third of the way through the 2025-26 NBA season, there's no denying it: The Sixers cooked with their two-way signings this past summer.

Dominick Barlow has started 13 games and is setting career highs in points (8.2), rebounds (5.8), assists (1.9), blocks (1.1), steals (0.8) and minutes (26.9) per game. Jabari Walker is playing more sparingly than Barlow, but he's chipping in 4.6 points and 3.5 rebounds in only 13.8 minutes per game.

"He's just a bully, so physical, so strong," Paul George said about Walker, per John Hollinger of The Athletic. "He's kind of a glue guy. He does a little bit of everything, spreads the floor, guards, rebounds. He does so much of the little dirty work."

Both Barlow and Walker have been success stories for the Sixers this year. But as Keith Smith of Spotrac noted, the Sixers have to make moves with at least one of them within the next month-and-a-half.

Not worried about it yet, but something to keep an eye on:

The Philadelphia 76ers are limited to 90 active games for their two-way players because they have only 14 players on standard contracts. They have just 40 total two-way games left towards that 90-game limit.

The Sixers…
— Keith Smith (@KeithSmithNBA) December 13, 2025

Here's the exact verbiage from the CBA:

"Any Regular Season game for which a Team has fewer than fifteen (15) players signed to Standard NBA Contracts shall be an “Under-Fifteen Game.” No Team shall be permitted to have a Two-Way Player on its Active List for more than ninety (90) Under-Fifteen Games during a Regular Season. For purposes of the foregoing rule: (A) an Under-Fifteen Game for which a Team has one (1) Two-Way Player on its Active List shall count as one (1) Under-Fifteen Game; (B) an Under-Fifteen Game for which a Team has two (2) Two-Way Players on its Active List shall count as two (2) Under-Fifteen Games; and (C) an Under-Fifteen Game for Article II 53 which a Team has three (3) Two-Way Players on its Active List shall count as three (3) Under-Fifteen Games."

If Barlow and Walker are on the Sixers' active roster every game moving forward, the Sixers will hit that 90-game mark on Monday, Jan. 26. That's the first night of a back-to-back for them, so by that Tuesday, they'll either need to convert one of them to a standard contract, or they'll need to fill their open roster spot some other way.

There is a loophole that the Sixers can exploit to buy themselves more time, though.

Ten-day contracts can help them bridge the gap

The Sixers might not want to convert Barlow or Walker until after the Feb. 5 NBA trade deadline so they can maximize their optionality with their open roster spot. They have six games between Jan. 26 and Feb. 5, so they could just keep one of those two off their active roster for six games and that would get them to the trade deadline.

However, there might be an even better pathway to help them bridge that gap.

The "Under-Fifteen Game" limit only applies when a team has fewer than 15 players under standard contracts. The league's collective bargaining agreement defines a standard contract as any contract other than a two-way deal. It specifically does not exclude 10-day contracts from that definition.

Starting on Jan. 5, teams can begin to sign players to 10-day contracts, which span either 10 days or three games (whichever is longer). Teams cannot sign the same player to more than two 10-day contracts during the same season, but if they fill that open roster spot with two consecutive 10-day contracts, that should be more than enough to get them past the trade deadline without having to remove either Barlow or Walker from their active list.

Even if the Sixers successfully pull off the Under-Fifteen Game tightrope walk, they'll also have to be mindful of another restriction on two-way players. Teams can't have a player on a two-way contract on their active list for more than 50 games in a season, and both Barlow and Walker are already halfway there.

Unless they're planning to convert both players to standard contracts at some point, they may need to start keeping whomever they don't want to convert off their active list in some games. If the Sixers make it to the playoffs this year, Barlow and Walker won't be eligible to play unless they get converted to a standard deal by the end of the regular season.

Players aren't eligible to sign two-way deals if they have four years of NBA experience, which both Barlow and Walker will have at the end of this season. So, the Sixers couldn't keep either one on a two-way deal next year. The good news is that the Sixers kept a chip in their back pocket perhaps for this exact reason.

How the Sixers could convert Walker and Barlow

At the moment, the Sixers still have their full $5.7 million taxpayer mid-level exception. It will begin to prorate downward on Jan. 10, losing roughly $32,700 in value per day from there on out. However, minimum contracts began prorating by more than $13,000 daily as soon as the regular season began.

We're already 57 days into the season, which means minimum deals have lost nearly $750,000 in value. If someone signed one today, it would be worth roughly $1.5 million rather than $2.3 million. After the trade deadline, min deals will be worth less than $1 million.

So, while the taxpayer MLE will also prorate, the Sixers could still offer Barlow and/or Walker far more money with that than they can with a standard minimum contract. However, the new CBA did limit contracts signed with the taxpayer MLE to be no more than two years in length. Under the previous CBA, they could be up to three.

If the Sixers eventually want to convert both Walker and Barlow, they'll have to create one more open roster spot somehow. That could be as simple as salary-dumping Eric Gordon elsewhere, or it could be a more complicated transaction in which they take back one fewer player than they send out.

The Sixers still have a month or so before they need to figure out the specifics of which player(s) to convert and how they plan on doing so. But they need to start planning how to avoid bumping into the Under-Fifteen-Game limit before the trade deadline unless they're fine with filling their open roster spot before trade activity peaks.