Raptors Should Be Concerned About the 76ers’ Threat of a Max Contract for Their Remarkable Ace

The Philadelphia 76ers appear to be looming as a potential landing spot for O.G. Anunoby at some point in the not-too-distant future.

Even with months to go before the trade deadline and even longer before his free agency next summer, the threat of losing Anunoby should be creating concern for the Toronto Raptors. Trade chatter already began to circle Anunoby in the aftermath of the James Harden trade as Anunoby’s name has begun to pop up as a target for the 76ers, per Sports Illustrated’s Chris Mannix.

Making matters more complicated is Anunoby’s contract situation which essentially prohibits the 27-year-old forward from signing an extension with Toronto. It’s a similar situation to what Toronto just saw transpire with Fred VanVleet who also wouldn’t sign for his maximum allowed extension last season and eventually departed the Raptors for a max contract from the Houston Rockets.

As HoopsHype reported, the 76ers could take a page out of Houston’s playbook and use the same strategy the Rockets deployed to sign VanVleet to pry Anunoby away from Toronto next summer. For example, Philadelphia could offer Anunoby a first-year salary of nearly $40 million while still retaining the rest of their core except Tobias Harris.

Toronto could go over that number with a max contract offer higher than anyone else could offer Anunoby this summer. It’s just a matter of being willing to go that high. As the Raptors found out last summer, players who don’t quite seem like traditional max contract players occasionally get max contract money if there’s a team desperate enough to go out and make a splash.