The Sixers are set to make their first signing of the Mike Gansey era, after agreeing to a four-year, $39 million contract to lure forward Dean Wade away from the Cleveland Cavaliers. It reunites Gansey with one of his guys from the Cavs, and gives the Sixers a potential fifth starter with defensive chops and a solid NBA reputation.

Let’s dive into the move.

Mistake-free, almost to a fault

Wade is the sort of “play within yourself” role player that the Sixers simply did not have last season. We have seen transformative effects of smart decision-making from role players in Philly — even a near-the-end version of Nic Batum helped juice this team up — and Wade is a player who will minimize mistakes all over the floor.

The Cavs frequently counted on Wade as a fifth starter because of his consistent defensive impact and willingness to play a no-frills, low usage role on offense. His ability to guard is the main sales pitch here, and he put up some pretty impressive individual numbers while battling a variety of player types in Cleveland. With power forward size at 6’9″, Wade was trusted to guard everyone from Jalen Brunson to Paolo Banchero and essentially everyone in between, possessing a nice combo of size and smarts to wall off his man and get a good contest in no matter the matchup. He’s particularly good at containing drivers:

Assuming he fills the fifth starter role for Philadelphia, that would slide Paul George into a more manageable role on second or even third options, depending on the matchups, freeing the veteran wing and rising star VJ Edgecombe to play more aggressively in passing lanes and wreak havoc off the ball. Wade is not going to help you create many turnovers himself, but he will help you end possessions one way or another.

One interesting Wade quirk to track with the Sixers is whether his rebounding influence, a word being used deliberately, will hold up. By the raw numbers, Wade is a fairly pedestrian rebounder, particularly for a player viewed as a dirty work/glue guy. But the Cavs were consistently a better defensive-rebounding team with Wade on the floor, a trend that persisted throughout most of his tenure in Cleveland. He does a good job of focusing on his job on any given possession, whether that’s hitting a man on a box-out or recognizing that it’s his ball to go get, which seems to make a difference in the aggregate. Will that hold up when he’s on a team with systemic rebounding problems and size problems in many lineups? That remains to be seen.

Wade only committed 16 turnovers in 59 regular-season games last season and has a remarkable track record of protecting the ball, but he is a great example of where “minimizing mistakes” can often stifle creativity and possessions. Wade is mostly unable to get himself into advantageous situations on-ball, leading to plenty of recycled plays. He attempted a shockingly low number of free throws over the final months of the season, and shouldn’t be expected to do much more than spot up and score on occasional putbacks.

The Sixers will have to hope they can coax him to shoot more threes and speed his release up a bit, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on either. At least he’s a decent shooter when he gets shots up, clocking in at 36.7 percent for his career. Alongside high-volume creators like Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, and the George/Edgecombe combo to a lesser extent, a fifth starter who mostly stays out of the way could be just what the doctor ordered.

Cleveland was able to win two playoff series this year in part due to his individual defense on Brandon Ingram and Cade Cunningham, but every team the Cavs played in their Eastern Conference Finals run was able to hide their worst defenders on Wade when he was on the court. On the one hand, the Sixers have grown used to that phenomenon. Even Kelly Oubre, a far more dynamic offensive player and downhill threat than Wade, has spent long periods of the playoffs ignored on the wings as teams dare him to make shots. So Wade’s ability to check the opposing team’s best player across multiple positions is something they feel is valuable enough to deal with the other warts. But it is a slight disappointment that a player who is currently on pace to be their fifth starter is only a slightly above-average shooter for his career, given that he can’t do much else.

What does the rest of their business look like?

Wade’s deal for $39 million over four years is arguably an overpay but not a massive one, and I’d posit that the years are more worrisome than the AAV. He usually battles a few different injuries per year, and a limited offensive player who is in and out of the lineup could be harder to trade than you’d like if things don’t work out in the short term.

But focusing on the right now, Wade’s deal only takes up a portion of the roughly $15 million midlevel exception, leaving the Sixers with a bit under six million to sign an external free agent using that exception. A few relevant numbers to throw out there:

• Philadelphia is now roughly $8 million below the luxury tax line
• Philadelphia is now roughly $16.6 million below the first apron line, which they are hard-capped at, thanks to using the MLE
• Philadelphia theoretically still has access to the bi-annual exception to sign an external free agent, which is valued at around $5.5 million

We lead with the former because Joshua Harris’ willingness to pay the luxury tax may be the difference between making multiple meaningful additions to the roster right now vs. doing whatever is necessary to allow the team to get under the tax line by the trade deadline. In theory, the Sixers could bring in two more meaningful players or re-sign Kelly Oubre while hunting for another free agent that fits within the MLE, if ownership will greenlight spending over the tax line heading into the season.

I am not an Oubre superfan by any means, but if the Sixers manage to bring back Oubre, I think that actually makes the Wade acquisition better. Oubre has taken on a lot of the defensive responsibilities that Wade will now carry for the Sixers, is light-years ahead of Wade at getting his own shot, and offers offensive punch in a pinch when their stars are faltering. Retaining Oubre would allow the Sixers to rotate a group of George/Wade/Oubre for tougher perimeter assignments and keep their wing defense relatively strong at basically all times. It would also give them stylistic changes to throw at teams, with Oubre more of a risk-taker on both ends, a good changeup to complement Wade’s way of doing things. The ability to do the same job in different ways would be meaningful, in this writer’s opinion.

(Quentin Grimes, for what it’s worth, appears set to head to the Lakers for a deal in the same AAV neighborhood as Wade’s. Whether you would have rather had him back at the same number is your call, I am fine with the positional swap myself.)

Oubre might prefer an opportunity elsewhere for reasons beyond money, but if the Sixers box themselves into tax-ducking territory and cost themselves Oubre as a result, the picture gets a little muddier. They’re without an every-night backup to Joel Embiid, they’re a little too reliant on Justin Edwards for wing minutes, and still probably in need of a fourth guard and some more shooting. Given what the market has looked like so far, it’ll be hard enough to get a fair deal for a good role player, but definitionally impossible if they neglect to use all the tools at their disposal.

It is a solid and satisfactory start to their free agency business, and the ultimate questions left are less about Gansey than the organization’s approach to spending.