Jason Thompson Shipped Back to California

By Sean Kennedy (@PhillyFastBreak)

Hinkie strikes again. Just when you thought it was safe to attend a casual, weekend-long bachelor party during the slowest period of the NBA offseason, the Sixers made another significant roster-shakeup Friday:

OFFICIAL: #Warriors acquire F Jason Thompson (@jtthekid) from @Sixers in exchange for Gerald Wallace, cash & draft considerations.

— Golden St. Warriors (@warriors) July 31, 2015

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsThompson, acquired as part of the Nik Stauskas deal with Sacramento, spent only 22 days with the Sixers after the club initially stated it intended for him to remain with the team throughout the season. From Camden and a star at nearby Rider University, Thompson always had a large contingent of fans in attendance when the Kings played their annual contest in Philadelphia. His presence might have helped serve against the growing sentiment in some NBA circles that veterans can’t currently enjoy their tenure as a Sixer given their seemingly perpetual rebuild phase. It would also have been nice from a watchability standpoint to have a consistent veteran in the rotation to stabilize things a bit among a Sixers roster that’s now almost entire 25 and under.

I wouldn’t feel too bad for Thompson though, as he gets to play a role with the reigning NBA champions and live in the Bay Area; there are much worse situations in which he could find himself. From the Warriors’ perspective, they get a useful reserve big man and save close to $10M in tax savings as a result of swapping Wallace’s $10.1M for Thompson, who is making $6.4M this year. They will also receive a trade exception for over $3M which could be useful down the road for a team over the cap. As for the benefit for the Sixers, we would quickly receive clarification on what that ‘draft consideration’ actually entailed: 

The Sixers will have the right to swap lesser of their first-round picks from #Miami and #OKC with #GoldenState‘s frist-round pick in 2016 . — Keith Pompey (@PompeyOnSixers) July 31, 2015

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As you may have heard, the Warriors are pretty okay at winning games, so it’s unlikely that either Miami or Oklahoma City would finish with a better record than them and have this swap pay off for the Sixers. Even if it did, it might be something along the lines of moving up from the 29th pick to the 24th. Certainly not a worthless asset to pick up, and with what we saw with the Sacramento trade, picking up little advantages here and there in future draft considerations can help grease a deal later on down the road. Thompson’s departure will also provide more of an opportunity for guys like the newly-signed Richaun Holmes to play meaningful minutes from the get-go.

With Gerald Wallace making $10.1M in the last year of his albatross contract and the Sixers still having 17 guaranteed contracts, all indications are he will eventually be cut by the team. Such a move would mean the Sixers would be paying Wallace and JaVale McGee a combined $22.1M this year in exchange for what may essentially be the better first round pick between the Thunder and the Warriors. That’s a really expensive way to go about grabbing a pick in the 20’s; whatever you want to say about the Sixers not picking up any real market movers in free agency the last few years, it’s not because they’re cheap.

While the local kid makes good storyline would have been nice this season, Jason Thompson doesn’t have much upside and wasn’t going to be a part of the long-term future here in Philadelphia. One would expect more transactions to happen now, as the Wallace release should occur sometime in the near future and Carl Landry, as the other lone veteran left on the roster, might be shipped out to whittle the roster back down to 15. As the Sixers continue to hunt and peck around the margins in these deals, fans continue to patients wait for the day when these transactions that inch the franchise along finally make a difference with the on-court product.