Friday news from Shams:

If he’s taking a $15 million pay cut this season that puts his salary around $32 million and leaves the Sixers a few million below the hard cap. Obviously they knew they were getting the extra money to add P.J. Tucker and Danuel House so this was already a team-friendly move from Harden, but now we finally have more information on length and terms of the new contract.

The flexibility granted from Harden taking a pay cut can’t be understated. It gave Daryl Morey a lot of front-end wiggle room and resulted in a roster that looks much better already, with the main pieces being:

  • Harden
  • Joel Embiid
  • Tyrese Maxey
  • Tobias Harris
  • P.J. Tucker
  • De’Anthony Melton
  • Danuel House

You’ve then got $5 million going to Furkan Korkmaz and $4.3 million to Matisse Thybulle, and the Harris trade rumors are probably always going to be lingering, so we’ll keep an eye on all of that moving forward. There originally wasn’t a lot of room to maneuver based on the assumption Harden would opt-in for $47 million, but this really worked out nicely for the Sixers in the end. And from Harden’s perspective, if he has a positive year but it doesn’t really work out team-wise, then he can opt out and still sign a long-term extension somewhere else. Seems reasonable. $32 million this year and then free agency if he wants it.