Sixers mailbag: Ahead of his long-awaited return, is Jared McCain now a candidate to be traded?
The Sixers are 5-1 heading into Tuesday night’s matchup against the only other team in the Eastern Conference with such a record, the Chicago Bulls.
Jared McCain, who has not played in an NBA game in 326 days, appears set to make his season debut; the 21-year-old guard has been upgraded to probable in advance of the first leg of the Sixers’ second back-to-back of the campaign.
How McCain and Paul George fit into a Sixers group that has found such a tremendous groove remains at the top of mind for many Sixers fans, and it was once again evident as questions poured in for this week’s Sixers mailbag.
Let’s see what’s on your mind:
From @woolford3387: Given the Quentin Grimes and VJ Edgecombe situations (how they are playing and Grimes’ potential contract), is Jared McCain a trade candidate to find a true starting power forward?
Let the kid play one game!
In all seriousness, this is not a ridiculous question to ask, though my answer would be an emphatic no. The Sixers have four stellar guards ages 25 or younger: Tyrese Maxey – who turns 25 years old today! – plus Edgecombe, Grimes and McCain. The likeliest outcome, clearly, is that not all four of those players end up staying in Philadelphia forever.
But the Sixers’ goal right now should not be to have the most balanced roster possible. They should be accumulating as much talent (particularly young talent) as they can, and with Grimes almost certainly not tradable this year due to his veto power, there is no obvious move that balances the team’s personnel from a positional perspective without subtracting from the quality of its collection of long-term talent.
McCain being a distant third behind Maxey and Edgecombe in terms of value as an asset to the Sixers would not mean he is no longer an enormously valuable commodity. McCain is very young, very cheap and very good; his versatile offensive skillset makes him a seamless fit with any group of players and he has all of the intangible qualities the organization has been coveting in young players over the last few years. The fact that McCain has not played in a long time should not make people forget just how brilliant he was before suffering a season-ending torn meniscus.
McCain, just a few weeks into his NBA career, was scoring 20-plus points on a nightly basis with high efficiency marks. Right before he went down, he made significant and rapid gains as a facilitator and was about to settle into an ideal role as a sixth man. Starting on Tuesday, he and Grimes will tag-team that role behind the starting backcourt of Maxey and Edgecombe, though Sixers head coach said on Sunday that he has not shut the door on starting Grimes alongside Maxey and Edgecombe, which could create more ball-handling opportunities for McCain.
Even if it felt like trading McCain was a more sensible move, the logistics of it are too difficult. Because of their salary cap situation, the Sixers are not in much of a position to absorb more salary than they send out in a deal. McCain is only making about $4.2 million this season. The rules of salary-matching in trades and a potential hard cap at the first apron make it almost impossible to trade McCain for the caliber of player it would be worth giving him up to get.
The expectation should be that Maxey, Edgecombe, Grimes and McCain are all in Philadelphia for the entirety of this season, with the next real decision being Grimes’ unrestricted free agency in the summer of 2026.
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From @skand3lous.bsky.social: While McCain may be limited as he’s returning from injury, how do you see the minute breakdown for a fully healthy backcourt with Tyrese Maxey, VJ, McCain & Grimes all in the mix? Interesting problem to have.
Maxey is still going to be among the NBA league leaders in minutes; riding the best and most durable players to an extreme degree is part of Nurse’s belief system. But even Nurse would probably admit that the league-leading 42.5 minutes Maxey has averaged across six games this season is too much. While Grimes and Edgecombe have done an admiral job tag-teaming the backup point guard role, that job should primarily belong to McCain moving forward; he is a superior ball-handler and playmaker.
McCain is also the best shooter of the non-Maxey guards, particularly in the ways that can be weaponized as an off-ball guard. That is why he must also share the floor with Maxey, even if the pairing is challenged on the defensive end of the floor.
The key rotation ramification of McCain’s return is that Grimes will likely play nearly all of his minutes as a small forward. He has done tremendous work to make the Sixers’ three-guard lineups viable defensively; that allows Nurse to ride the tremendous offense coming from that group. McCain should factor into those arrangements, too, but Grimes being just about a full-time three is probably what needs to happen in order for McCain to play close to as many minutes as someone with his ability should. Otherwise, there are just not enough minutes in a game.
Because the Sixers are likely facing an eventual decision on which guards to keep and which to let go, they should play every conceivable combination of these four players as much as they can so that when the decision comes, they will have as much evidence informing their choice as possible. That means embracing a smaller look with Maxey and McCain at times, getting a look at McCain at point guard next to Edgecombe with Maxey off the floor, throwing Grimes in there with those two, and even a super-small Maxey-McCain-Edgecombe look just to see what the possibilities are.
It is important to remember what you said after posing the question: this is an incredibly interesting problem to have, and it is also a problem every team would beg to have to sort out.
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From @truegrit57: What changes will we see to improve the team’s defense? Team cannot keep giving up 70 points in a half.
The Sixers have made some very recent strides on defense, but they are still not nearly good enough on that end. McCain’s return is not going to help on that front, but the upcoming return of nine-time All-Star Paul George could do wonders. George was actually excellent defensively in a debut Sixers season that was otherwise disastrous. Whether or not George can still put the ball in the basket like a star is very much up in the air, but with McCain back on the floor, Maxey playing the best basketball of his life and Edgecombe shattering expectations, that is suddenly not such a major concern.
Will George, a high-usage star for more than a decade, be willing to take somewhat of a back seat as a scorer and buy into a defensive-oriented role? If so, he could become the piece that makes this team great. The Sixers do not just sorely lack defensive presences in the frontcourt, but they have been winning in spite of some suboptimal minutes from players like Justin Edwards and Jabari Walker early in the season.
Players like Edwards, Walker and Trendon Watford all have NBA skills and can help the Sixers win, but none are surefire bets to be quality rotation pieces night in and night out. George, even in a diminished state, will be a quality starter all year long. It is the bare minimum for a player who will unquestionably raise the Sixers’ floor, even if the team initially signed him thinking he would push their ceiling to championship heights.
Otherwise, the defense needs Joel Embiid’s lateral quickness to improve. Embiid is very much finding himself on offense right now, and the results have been quite encouraging there. But he is still failing to protect the rim at a satisfactory level because his mobility is just not there. Adem Bona blocking everything as Embiid’s backup has been a boon for the Sixers, but most of their center minutes still belong to a hobbled Embiid and a weak rim protector in Andre Drummond (whose minutes have still been solid, to be clear).
The Sixers have always revolved around Embiid on both ends of the floor, and they have finally adopted an identity that enables them to score points without the former NBA MVP in the game. But the Sixers do not have much of a path to fielding a consistent, impactful team defense without Embiid getting himself back to being the game-changing defensive stalwart he had always been until last season.
MORE: More on what Sixers will look like with Paul George and McCain healthy
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