We probably should have seen this coming the whole time. If James Harden’s plan was to sign a contract extension with the Sixers, it always made the most sense for him to become a free agent first. The rational choice was always either/or: Harden exercises his $47.3 million option and plays out the year for the Sixers, or the two sides agree on a contract extension that lessens the Year 1 salary-cap hit and gives the team the financial flexibility it needs to accomplish its offseason goals.
The big question was whether Harden and the Sixers were as married to each other as both have indicated since the mid-February trade that landed him in Philly. Turns out, they are, according to multiple reports that say the future Hall of Famer has opted out and will momentarily become a free agent in order to sign a contract that, at the very least, allows the Sixers to use the full $10.3 million mid-level exception on a starter (P.J. Tucker, perhaps and the $4.3 million bi-annual exception on a bench piece) even before they figure out the futures of Matisse Thybulle and Tobias Harris.
The layman’s version of how all of this works is as follows. Had Harden exercised his $47.3 million player option, the Sixers would have been locked in to that amount on their salary-cap sheet for the 2022-23 season. Even if they’d subsequently signed him to an extension, it would not have lowered Harden’s cap hit for the upcoming season, and thus would have drastically limited the Sixers’ ability to sign a free agent like Tucker.
