How the Sixers could re-sign Guerschon Yabusele in free agency this offseason

For the second straight year, the Sixers’ final signing of the offseason was one of their best.

Last year, the Sixers signed Kelly Oubre Jr. to a one-year, veteran-minimum contract in mid-September. He proceeded to start 52 games for them and averaged 15.4 points in 30.2 minutes per game, which helped him land a two-year, $16.4 million contract via the room mid-level exception this past summer. If the Sixers don’t flip him before the trade deadline, they’ll have Early Bird rights on him this coming offseason, which would enable them to sign him to a four-year deal worth up to $62.6 million.

Guerschon Yabusele could follow in Oubre’s footsteps soon enough.

After his standout play at the Olympics with the French national team, the Sixers signed Yabusele to a one-year, $2.1 million veteran-minimum contract in late August. Yabusele flamed out of the league after only two years with the Boston Celtics in the late 2010s, but the Sixers have given his NBA career a new lease on life. He’s taken that opportunity and run with it, as he’s averaging 9.6 points on 49.5 percent shooting and 5.2 rebounds in only 23.5 minutes per game.

The Sixers will be in a similar boat with Yabusele this offseason that they were with Oubre last summer. Since Yabusele is on a one-year deal, the Sixers will only have non-Bird rights on him. That means the Sixers can offer him only 120 percent of his previous salary or 120 percent of the minimum salary, whichever is greater. (The latter will be slightly higher.)

In 2025-26, the minimum salary projects to be roughly $2.3 million, so the Sixers could start Yabusele’s next contract at roughly $2.75 million if they use non-Bird rights to re-sign him. The contract could span up to four years, although Yabusele would likely prefer a shorter deal to maximize his earning power.

Depending on what the Sixers do at the trade deadline—namely, whether they add more salary for the 2025-26 season—they could have another way to re-sign Yabusele.

The first apron is currently projected to be $195.9 million next season, while the second apron is projected to be $207.8 million. Teams that go over the first apron have access to the taxpayer mid-level exception, which projects to be $5.7 million next year, while teams over the second apron lose access to all MLEs. Teams that use the taxpayer MLE get hard-capped at the second apron, which means they aren’t allowed to exceed that threshold under any circumstance.

If the Sixers don’t add salary for next season at the trade deadline, they should have enough wiggle room under the second apron to use the taxpayer MLE this offseason. That’s true even if they give Oubre the full $62.6 million contract that he’s able to receive via Early Bird rights and if Andre Drummond opts out and the Sixers give him a $1 million raise via his non-Bird rights.

In that scenario, the Sixers would wind up being less than $700,000 below the second apron once they filled out the remainder of their roster. Granted, they’d likely leave one roster spot open, just like they have this season, to maximize their flexibility and give themselves slightly more wiggle room. Still, that proximity to the second apron wouldn’t be unprecedented.

This season, the New York Knicks are hard-capped at the second apron and currently sit about $535,000 below it. The Los Angeles Lakers aren’t hard-capped at the moment, but they entered the season only $30,000 below the second apron. (They did just give themselves more breathing room with the D’Angelo Russell/Dorian Finney-Smith trade, though.) The Golden State Warriors are hard-capped at the first apron and are only $330,000 below, while the Dallas Mavericks are hard-capped at the first apron and are only $525,000 below.

These are the tight margins that front offices will have to navigate in the coming years under this new CBA. But it’s at least theoretically possible that the Sixers could spend the taxpayer MLE on Yabusele, re-sign both Oubre and Drummond if they opt out and still stay below the second apron.

If Yabusele is amenable to re-signing on a two-year minimum contract with a second-year player option, that’d be the best-case scenario for the Sixers. That wouldn’t hard-cap them, and they’d still gain Early Bird rights on Yabusele, so they could re-sign him the following summer for 105 percent of the league’s average salary in the 2025-26 season. That could put him right in the same four-year, $60 million ballpark that Oubre will be in this summer.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the Sixers won’t have anything more than the taxpayer MLE to offer Yabusele, if they even have that. If another team offers him $6-plus million, whether via cap space, the non-taxpayer MLE or the room MLE, the Sixers can’t outbid them.

Granted, Oubre could prove instructive to Yabusele in that regard. After he re-signed with the Sixers last summer, he said he had other options on the table—including some that were “closer to the ballpark” of where he wanted to land financially—but he instead chose to stay in Philly.

“At the end of the day, man, it’s all about situations,” Oubre told reporters after he re-signed. “It’s all about fit, it’s all about the people that I’m working with and I’m working for. And that just superseded everything else, because I didn’t want to necessarily move my family to a new place, go and meet new people and have to do this all over again.”

“I want to … I don’t want to say finish what I started, because I don’t plan on being done. This is a step toward where I want to be at—signing a more long-term deal—but this was the place where I felt comfortable, and I felt safe and happy. And I fell in love with the game of basketball here, so why would I go anywhere else?”

The Sixers can only hope Yabusele will feel the same way this coming offseason, particularly if another team offers him more than the taxpayer MLE. Luckily, it sounds like he might.

“From the beginning, they’ve been super positive with me and pushing me every time I’m on the court,” Yabusele told reporters about his time with the Sixers. “Like the coaches and the players pushing me to shoot the ball sometimes, they’ve been telling me to shoot the ball. It’s been perfect since I’ve got here. They’ve shown me so much love. I’m really feeding off that energy for sure. They make me want to do more and just keep fighting.”

Only a handful of teams project to have cap space this offseason, and using one of the MLEs results in a hard cap. There’s no guarantee that Yabusele will have an eight-figure offer from another team awaiting in free agency, particularly after guys like Tyus Jones and Gary Trent Jr. had to settle for one-year, veteran-minimum contracts last summer.

The Sixers can only hope that the rest of the league overlooks what Yabusele is doing for them. They have limited ways to retain him, but it’d be in their best interest to keep him around beyond this season.

Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Salary Swish and salary-cap information via RealGM.