The Sixers might be better off without Quentin Grimes and Kelly Oubre Jr.

It will draw some snickers to hold up Landry Shamet as the kind of player that the 76ers should be targeting this offseason.

Those snickers won’t be entirely fair.

Shamet’s path to NBA relevance has taken him through five different organizations in the seven years since the Sixers traded him to the Clippers as part of the package that landed them Tobias Harris. He has been traded three times and waived twice, including once by the team that just signed him to a four-year, $24 million contract. Shamet’s rise to playoff prominence with the Knicks occurred long enough ago to render his Sixers tenure irrelevant. Rare is the NBA player who spends eight seasons with the team that drafted him. It is mere coincidence that Shamet is now a for-instance for the Sixers.

Free agency started with a hard-earned whimper for the overseers of this Sixers roster. All around the Eastern Conference, the contenders and the hopefuls leapt into action. The reports said the Celtics were still gauging Jaylen Brown’s trade market while the Raptors were bringing Kawhi Leonard home. The Heat started filling in the blanks with Tim Hardaway Jr. The Hornets and Pistons had already traded away LaMelo Ball and Isaiah Stewart, respectively, while the Hawks had already traded for Aaron Wiggins.

» READ MORE: NBA free agency news: Sixers have limited options and cap space

The Sixers?

On Sunday, they exercised Domnick Barlow’s $3.4 million option.

Welcome to the Moment!

Thing is, no news is actually good news. That goes for Mike Gansey and Bob Myers and Nick Nurse and whoever else will have a say now that the NBA’s free agent signing period has begun. Market-making rarely ends well for a team in the Sixers’ position. They need to be hunting value, and they need to be doing it on a time horizon that extends well past the upcoming season.

Such an objective doesn’t preclude a reunion with Quentin Grimes or Kelly Oubre Jr. The Sixers can essentially spend whatever it would take to re-sign one or both and thereby keep last season’s playoff rotation more or less intact. Both would make sense at a certain price. Problem is, that price will almost self-evidentially be wrong.

The early indications on Tuesday evening were that Oubre and Grimes would both have options outside of Philadelphia. One report had Oubre meeting with five teams, including the Sixers. Another had Grimes as a prime Lakers target. Both developments point to a world where the Sixers are better off preserving their ability to spend up to $15 million on new faces via the non-taxpayer Mid-Level Exception.

Re-sign Grimes and/or Oubre Jr.

Utilize the MLE carve out to add from the outside.

Those are pretty much the only two options the Sixers have for adding significant pieces to a rotation that already includes Tyrese Maxey, VJ Edgecombe, Joel Embiid, Paul George, and first round pick LaBaron Philon Jr. Their end-of-the-benchers include Barlow, Justin Edwards and Adem Bona, each of whom played at least a handful of meaningful minutes this past postseason. None of the three would belong in the playoff rotation of a legitimate contender, barring a big step forward in development. If the Sixers envision themselves becoming such a contender, their potential paths are not bountiful.

The hope — at least, it should be for fans — is that Gansey and Myers understand who the Sixers are right now. The early indications suggest that they do. Gansey copped to it on draft night when defending his decision to draft another smallish guard.

“You look at our roster, we need help at every position, one through five,” the new Sixers president said.

Finding that much help in one offseason is nearly impossible. That’s especially true in a competitive landscape like the one that confronts the Sixers in the Eastern Conference. Is it possible that the Knicks take a step backwards? That the Celtics end up taking another gap year after trading Jaylen Brown? That the Heat are a weirdly-constructed, dysfunctional team that lacks the depth and backcourt to be a powerhouse with Giannis Antetokounmpo? That the Pacers are overrated? That the Hornets and the Hawks and the Wizards are not there yet? Sure. But all of that would probably need to happen along with everything breaking right for the Sixers with George and Embiid in order for them to end up in the NBA Finals next season. The question Gansey must ask himself: Are we more likely to find a move that contributes to us contending this season, or a move that contributes to us contending in some future season?

» READ MORE: Sixers free-agency primer: Players who could depart, possible outside targets, and more

Back to the Shamet thing. The Knicks initially signed him in 2024. He was 27 years old, had been waived by the Wizards, and he’d be waived by the Knicks at the end of training camp. He spent a stint in the G-League, then re-signed with the Knicks. The following September, he again signed a one-year deal with New York. Less than a year later, the world champion Knicks deemed him worthy of a four-year deal that will nearly double his career earnings to date.

That should be the goal for Gansey. Find guys you might one day re-sign for a lot more money than you initially needed to give them. It is a difficult thing to do on the open free agent market. Those MLE dollars are coming in handy as the Sixers reportedly agreed to a four-year deal with Dean Wade on Tuesday night. He’s a player who can help make the Sixers a better product this season but whose most likely contribution to the Sixers circa two or three years from now will be as a salary voucher on the trade market.

The important thing is that the focus remains there: two or three years from now, when Edgecombe will ideally have taken two or three more steps towards superstardom and Embiid and George’s contracts will be moveable or off the books and the Sixers will need a couple of big two-way wings and an athletic center and a deep bench and as much draft capital as they can preserve and accrue.

Competitive growth is the goal. The worst thing the Sixers can do in free agency is jeopardize the growth part.