The Sixers Have Dodged the Luxury Tax Again. If Not Now, Then When?

One of the many luxuries Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey afford the Sixers is that they do not ask for much publicly.

Every once in a while, one will dance around some public pressure, mildly requesting a certain player archetype or politely yearn for some sort of on-court assistance. But they do not use their star equity much, committed to doing their jobs on the court and letting everyone else do their jobs away from the court.

Until recently, anyway.

Embiid speaks quietly, but he is deliberate in everything he says. He pays attention to the ins and outs of the league, from basketball nuances to salary-cap minutiae. But he made it clear that he is, indeed, aware of the situation. Aware of the history surrounding the Sixers' front office.

"Obviously, we've been ducking the tax the last couple of years. So hopefully we'll keep the same team. I love all the guys that are here, so I think we got a shot. I don't know what they're going to do, but I hope that at least we get a chance to just go out there and compete because we got a good group of guys in this locker room," Embiid told reporters after the team's victory over the Sacramento Kings last week.

"Vibes are great, so, like I said, in the past we've been ducking the tax. So hopefully we think about improving because I believe we have a chance."

Two mentions of "ducking the tax". Two expressions of belief in the team's chances this year.

That is a mild way of requesting that the team do something to improve upon what is already in place.

The Sixers are 29-21, fighting to move up the standings for homecourt advantage in the 2026 playoffs. They are one game behind the fourth-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers, who have made waves of their own at the deadline. They are currently ahead of the Toronto Raptors for the fifth seed by virtue of a tiebreaker.

The average night for the Sixers is clawing and scratching for a victory. Yet they have a remarkable opportunity in this season's Eastern Conference.

Don't believe that?

They've played the top-seed Detroit Pistons close in two games without Embiid. They've beaten the two-seed New York Knicks twice at Madison Square Garden and fought them down to the final possession in Philadelphia about a week ago. The Sixers have beaten the Boston Celtics twice, with a third game coming to the final shot. They've beaten the Toronto Raptors twice and came very close to taking three out of four regular-season games against them. The only team in the conference they haven't solved is the Cavaliers.

Perhaps you don't think it's all that relevant because getting through the conference means you win the right to get ripped to shreds by the winner of the Western Conference. Maybe that's true in the end. But no one is apologizing for getting to the NBA Finals.

The landscape of tax avoidance

And yet, take a look around the league. Of the six teams above the Play-In line in the east, only three are out of the tax. The Pistons, who have grown most of their talent internally, are 25 games above .500 and sit five games ahead of the two seed. They have earned the right to duck the tax.

The other two teams are the Sixers and Raptors, who will likely fight back and forth to avoid the Play-In for the remainder of the season. The Celtics, despite their best efforts to avoid the tax, remain above it. They are also tied with the Knicks for the two seed and are 15 games above .500 with the potential of Jayson Tatum returning. They upgraded their center position this week, as well.

In the Western Conference, the reigning-champion Oklahoma City Thunder are under the tax. The two-seed San Antonio Spurs are under the tax. The three-seed Denver Nuggets got under the tax line on Thursday.

Those teams are in excellent position as is, even if Denver has not enjoyed the most fortuitous health this season.

The Houston Rockets, Minnesota Timberwolves and Los Angeles Lakers — seeds four, five and six — are all in the luxury tax.

Simply put, you either get good enough to win the whole thing by developing the talent you accumulate in the draft or on the fringes of free agency or you pay up to have a chance. The teams who aren't in the tax have reason to believe that they are good enough as is.

And then there are the Sixers and Raptors.

It would be one thing if Philadelphia made this an exception season, a rare instance in which they saved some dollars but otherwise consistently went for it.

But it's not that.

This is four years in a row in which they've opted for tax savings at the trade deadline.

It was even valid if disappointing last season, when the team was going nowhere. Ditto for the year before that, when the trade deadline fell right after Embiid went down with a meniscus injury that kept him out for 29 games.

But it wasn't so valid when their move at the trade deadline during Embiid's MVP season was to switch out Matisse Thybulle for Jalen McDaniels, a young player who they claimed they believed in and then let walk for nothing in free agency that summer.

Now Philadelphia only has a resurgent Embiid season that is clearing the cloud that hovered over the franchise for the last season and a half. They have an All-NBA season from Maxey. You do not know how many more chances you will get with Embiid. You do not know how long Maxey's body will hold up under the workload he currently manages. The east is wide open. No one should give you pause about your ability to reach new heights.

And yet here they are again, dumping second-year guard Jared McCain for a package of future draft capital, eating away at shooting and guard depth that is already suspect on most nights. Sure, he struggled for most of this season. Sure, you had real reason to doubt just how much latitude he'd get in a playoff environment. But he has upside. He has a skill that you need. He can actually play 30 minutes in a pinch if, knock on wood, Maxey rolls an ankle or rookie sensation VJ Edgecombe goes down with some sort of ailment.

Now, they're one bad step away from requiring Kyle Lowry to lace them up on his retirement tour.

We can divorce the player from the action, something that many of the franchise's most passionate supporters have failed to do since the trade broke on Wednesday. McCain was not impacting much on a day-to-day basis with this team. He was jammed behind Maxey and Edgecombe, and perhaps even Quentin Grimes, in the team's plans for the future.

This is less about him than it is about the subtraction of talent for the sake of cost-cutting.

It's a nice little thing to be able to say you got draft capital back to use in the future. The future isn't helping you this season. And it doesn't save you from the fact that you sold on an interesting young piece just to skirt the dreaded luxury tax line.

No one is weaping over the departure of Eric Gordon, who was moved to get further under the tax and open up additional space to convert two-way contractors Dominick Barlow and perhaps Jabari Walker to standard deals. It even gives them a little space to entice someone on the buyout market.

But at what point is living on the buyout market just not an acceptable consolation prize anymore? The fact of the matter is that the Sixers are no better prepared to finish this season today than they were two days ago. In fact, you could argue that they are actually worse.

So if now isn't the time to take a swing at the trade deadline, when is?