June 01, 2026
Alonzo Adams/Imagn Images
Julian Champagnie just went from discarded Sixer to Western Conference Finals hero with the Spurs.
Friday was a transformative day for the Sixers. Saturday was a transformative day for the NBA.
The day after the Sixers agreed to a deal with Cleveland Cavaliers general manager Mike Gansey to be their new President of Basketball Operations and replace Daryl Morey, the San Antonio Spurs knocked off the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 7 to win the Western Conference.
The Spurs will face the New York Knicks in the 2026 NBA Finals, with the league now guaranteed to see its eighth champion in an eight-year period.
In this week's 5 Sixers thoughts, some cursory notes about Gansey's hiring, the upcoming battle between New York and San Antonio and more:
Expect Gansey's hiring to be made official early this week, with an introductory press conference likely to follow in short order. It will be the first chance for Gansey to outline his vision for the future of this organization, both in the summer ahead and the years ahead.
It will be intriguing to see how Gansey answers a bunch of different questions. Among them: does he plan to cater more to the short-term window surrounding Joel Embiid and Paul George, or keep a longer-term view centered around Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe?
Gansey will likely not answer this in a truly direct fashion – no incoming executive is going to discard the immediate future of the organization or its distant health – but as he fields questions about the makeup of this roster and how he plans to address its issues, it will be worth noting how often he talks about Maxey and Edgecombe versus Embiid and George.
Another story to monitor: as of this writing, it is not clear how the front office will look beneath Gansey. Reporting during the Bob Myers-led search indicated that assistant general manager Jameer Nelson was in line for a promotion. The Sixers have several other tenured executives with clout, including Prosper Karangwa, Ned Cohen and Ariana Andonian. Will any of them stick around to work with Gansey, or will he have a truly clean slate?
It has been a long time since the Sixers have ushered in a new lead decision-maker. Gansey is said to be a personable, likable character. His chance to make a strong first impression is nearing.
MORE: 2025-26 Sixers year-in-review
Jared McCain gave the Thunder a few jolts of offense in Saturday night's thrilling Game 7 against the Spurs, but ultimately San Antonio won the day, with a different Sixers castoff swinging the game with his sharpshooting.
Julian Champagnie, signed by the Sixers to a two-way contract as an undrafted free agent in 2022, only ended up logging two appearances with the team in his rookie season before being waived. The Sixers signed Mac McClung in Champagnie's two-way spot, and the 6-foot-7 wing landed in San Antonio. He has since become one of the league's elite shooters; the Spurs replaced veteran Harrison Barnes with Champagnie in their starting lineup midway through this season and almost instantly became a juggernaut.
In San Antonio's wire-to-wire 111-103 win to clinch an NBA Finals berth, Champagnie scored 20 points and shot 6-for-10 from beyond the arc. He will be starting in Game 1 this week when the Spurs host the red-hot New York Knicks. If the recent performances of both teams are any indication, the series should be outstanding.
At the center of it all – literally and figuratively – will be 22-year-old Victor Wembanyama, whose third NBA season now includes historic defensive impact and a toppling of the defending champions. Now, he has the chance to lead his team to a championship which, based on preseason expectations, would be one of the single most stunning titles in recent sports history.
The emergence of NIL in college sports has challenged NBA teams. The league's rookie scale artificially deflates salaries for players entering the league, and now first-round talents can bypass the NBA for a lucrative NIL package which ends up being worth more than their first-year salary. There is always some risk in passing up a chance to lock in two years of guaranteed salary on an NBA roster, but prospects ditching college as soon as they can is no longer the norm.
So, last week's withdrawal deadline made for an eventful night – and a consequential one for a Sixers team set to pick at No. 22 overall in the 2026 NBA Draft. There are a few high-profile returners, but none were truly shocking. There were at least as many high-profile players to keep their names in the class.
According to Ricky O'Donnell, who does a stellar job covering college basketball and the NBA Draft for SB Nation, the talent in this year's class now experiences a dip in the range of No. 24 or No. 25 overall. Of course, every team has a different board with different grades on different players, but in his mind the Sixers now find themselves close to the end of the region of the board where premium talent will still be available.
Among the players the Sixers could covet whose decisions went down to the wire before they elected to remain in the draft: Santa Clara wing Allen Graves, Arizona big Koa Peat, Stanford guard Ebuka Okorie, Arkansas guard Meleek Thomas and Texas Tech guard Christian Anderson.
As expected, the NBA's "3-2-1" lottery reform passed last week, and it will be the league's new system for determining the draft order beginning in 2027, with a three-year probationary period of sorts.
The new system flattens the odds significantly, adds more teams to the lottery and punishes the league's three worst teams – all of which will have worse chances of winning the lottery than other teams that fail to qualify for postseason action.
A breakdown of the new odds and percentages, courtesy of the NBA:
| Category | Number of teams | No. 1 pick odds (per team) | Average pick |
| Three worst teams | 3 | 5.4% | 8.1 |
| Remaining non-play-in teams | 7 | 8.1% | 7.4 |
| 9th and 10th seeds | 4 | 5.4% | 9.1 |
| Losers of 7 vs. 8 play-in games | 2 | 2.7% | 11.7 |
The extreme randomness of the league's new lottery drawing system will create major doubt as far as how future first-rounders should be valued. From the Los Angeles Clippers' unprotected 2028 first-round pick the Sixers fetched in one James Harden trade along with top-three protected swap rights the following year, to the top-eight protected first-rounder they owe the Brooklyn Nets in 2028 via another Harden trade, it is extremely difficult to prognosticate where picks will land. That could lead to significant congestion in the trade market.
Meanwhile, according to a report from Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic, the new 16-team lottery result will be flipped to determine the order of the first 16 picks of the second round:
One more NBA draft wrinkle included in the proposal, which will be voted on today, is that the order of the top half of the second round of the draft would be in the reverse order of the top 16 picks in the first round after the lottery is drawn, according to league sources. https://t.co/Mqv0iOf0rk
— Mike Vorkunov (@MikeVorkunov) May 28, 2026
The Sixers have an abundance of future second-rounders. It is a fool's errand to try to estimate how this change will impact the values of those picks. But at least for now, the days of acquiring definitively premium second-round picks appear to be over.
MORE: Sixers future draft pick tracker
After the Sixers' season-ending loss to the New York Knicks on May 10, Tyrese Maxey was asked about how he planned to process the season that was and plan his offseason.
"I'm about to debrief by going back to the crib," Maxey said, "and I'm blessed, about to be a father. So I'm happy with that. I'm ready to go home and then just see how that's like... Hell of a season. Had a great time playing basketball, and now this just brings a life challenge that's going to be great."
Last week, Maxey and Myra Gordon announced that they had welcomed their daughter, Marvel:
Big congrats to Tyrese Maxey and Myra Gordon 🙏
— Complex Sports (@ComplexSports) May 28, 2026
(via myra.christina/ig) pic.twitter.com/NBwuFsWaJs
Early Friday morning, Maxey posted an Instagram story of him with Marvel on his chest. His caption:
"Been up playing this game called
feed me or imma scream
Let me lay on you or imma scream
Get up and walk around or imma scream
For about 5 hours"
MORE: Relive the day Maxey's rise from rookie to superstar began
