In today's episode of The Sixers Beat, Rich and I dive deep into the upcoming James Hardin contract talks, going over what the Sixers' priorities should be, what outside factors could influence the negotiations, how much of a threat other teams would be to sign him outright, and what kind of contracts we'd be interested in offering Hardin.

Enjoy the podcast.

All right. Welcome, everybody. This is Derek Bodner, joined by Rich Hoffman on Sixers Beat, part of the Athletics Podcast Network. How you doing, Rich? Derek, I'm doing great. Are you doing five years, $270 million great? No, but I don't think James Hardin's doing that. No, I don't think he's doing that great. So that is going to be the topic of today's podcast. we're going to talk about what the Sixers should do or could do or maybe might do,

maybe all combinations of all three. So that is going to be the topic of today's podcast. We're going to talk about what the Sixers should do or could do or maybe might do,

maybe a combination of all three with James Hardin's contract over the summer.

So obviously he has a $47.4 million player option for next season. The Sixers could then negotiate an extension that would be upwards of additional four years

and $270 million, something in that range, something ungodly absurd, which won't happen

after everything that has happened.

You assume it better not happen.

So we're going to take a step back and sort of talk about all the considerations that go into that, what we think might be wise for them to do, where our heads are at with that. And I'm going to sort of start this off by saying my numbers are still a little bit in flux. I don't want to get into too much of exact numbers. I'll talk some numbers. but I'm still sort of throwing stuff around in my head that will probably come out in a future column, but where

our sort of heads are at. So I guess I'll sort of just start this off with a couple of the major

considerations for the Sixers. First of all, there's a short-term ability to field the team around

Embed, Hardin, and Maxi.

And a part of that is the apron threshold, which is set, I believe, for a hundred and fifty,

or projected for $155.7 million next season.

Basically what that means.

If you want to stay under that, and if you can't stay under that, you get a larger mid-level,

like a 10.3 non-taxpayer

mid-level versus something in a $6 million range. So you get a bigger mid-level exception

you use. You can attract a better free agent. You also get a buy annual exception for somewhere

in the $4 million range. There's also some sign and trade restrictions, but that's probably

not a big consideration for the six years, quite frankly, they don't have any matching salary to use anyway. So signing him to a lesser deal gives you more flexibility under that number. They're currently, I think... But they also couldn't go over that number in a trade, too. Correct. You can take... Tobias, you can't take more bad. A lopsided trade. You have more flexibility, 100%.

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