Podcast: De’Anthony Melton is a Sixer! So does that mean bye bye to the P.J. Tucker, Eric Gordon rumors?

On NBA Draft night, the 76ers made a bold move trading Danny Green and the no. 23 overall pick for fourth year guard De’Anthony Melton.

Green’s salary was mostly guaranteed, which means the Sixers now have 13 players under contract and hovering around $152M in salary, just shy of the projected 155.7M$ Tax Apron.

But there are tons of rumors that the team may be looking to pursue Miami Heat forward P.J. Tucker somewhere in the three-years $30M range.

And now fans have so many questions about what might happen next.

So even though we just had Forbes Sports Bryan Toporek on the pod to talk James Harden likely opting into his $47M option, we had to start begging him to return to help us make sense of where things stand with Melton, now officially a Sixer.

In this pod Bryan gets into:

• How does vegas always know stuff, like that the Orlando Magic were gunning for Paolo Banchero?
• Did it help the Sixers that Danny Green’s money was guaranteed as part of the De’Anthony Melton deal, or is there a world where they would have been better off just waiving Green?
• Bryan walks us through hypotheticals regarding the salary cap Apron and hard cap.
• Where are we at in terms of pursuing P.J. Tucker, what would it take to get him realistically? How could they finagle that Non-Taxpayer’s Mid-Level exception? Would it cost them Matisse Thybulle, Furkan Korkmaz and more?
• What about Eric Gordon? Is that idea dead?
• Tobias Harris trades: Gordon Hayward, Kevin Love? Eric Gordon?
• MLE targets if they’re operating in that tax payer’s $6.3M range? T.J. Warren?
• Would it be better to use that all at once, or just $4M and maintain flexibility heading into the season?
• What’s better, shorter term deals maximizing cap space in 2025 in case James Harden is cooked by then, or going all in now even if it means offering Harden a four or even five year deal?
• What’s going on with Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant and the Brooklyn Nets? Was it all leverage plays?

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