But to focus on this is to ignore the upside. The fact that the Sixers made the pick at all tells you they think it could be there. They entered draft night pondering the established veterans for whom they might trade their first-round pick. Morey has made it clear that he is operating with a heavy bias toward the short-term, given the Sixers’ current juncture with Joel Embiid at age 30. The club president said he had an offer on the table for a veteran who would have been a meaningful and more immediately impactful addition, and might yet in a later deal. They simply could not pass up the chance to take their chances on McCain.
That’s a heartening thing. This was the exact sort of opportunity that the Sixers could not afford to pass up in the interest of chasing a title in 2024-25. That they didn’t offers some hope that they are approaching this offseason in the optimal manner. Winning now is important. But winning later is the sort of thing that can also start now.
It may not work. It often doesn’t. But McCain has a skill set that can make him an asset even if he never becomes a star. He is the sort of player who has a good chance to become more valuable than the pick with which he was drafted. You don’t trade away a chance at TikTok Steph for Dalton Knecht or the next De’Anthony Melton.
Forget about championships for a moment. Finding out about the “might” can be a lot of fun.
The comp is going to sound absurd. I’m well aware of that.
I tried not to make it, tried to soft pedal it, tried to find a few other players who A) encapsulated the thing that Jared McCain’s skill set suggests he can become, and B) Illustrated the Sixers’ decision to select him at No. 16 was not only justified but a heartening sign that Daryl Morey’s head is in the right place.
A more efficient Trae Young? A shorter Desmond Bane? Immanuel Quickley?
Stop.
Steph Curry. That’s the comp. It just is.
There’s a very good chance I will regret writing that sentence, because there is a very small chance that McCain reaches even 75 percent of his ceiling. That’s just the way it is with 19-year-old kids who get drafted in the middle of the first round. You are lucky if they turn out to be an NBA starter, let alone a game-alterer.
It’s silly to think that McCain will become Steph Curry. But, then, it was silly to think Steph Curry would become Steph Curry when the Warriors drafted him seventh overall in 2009. Heck, it was silly to think it after three years in the league.
This isn’t a question of what will happen, or what should happen, or even what has a strong chance of happening.
The operative word is might.
It is impossible to say what any player will become. The rarest of players are the ones where it is impossible to say what they won’t become. McCain’s skill set puts him in that category.
To call him merely a shooter is to relegate him to a bucket of players who have never and will never and can never possess the element of making that matters the most. There are plenty of players who can knock down 41.4% of their three-point shots, as McCain did in his one season at Duke. There are plenty of players who can do it at a high volume, as McCain did with his 5.8 three-point attempts per game. But most of those players are shooters, not scorers. McCain doesn’t just have an elite ability to shoot. He has an elite ability to get that shot off.
It is a rare thing. Incredibly rare. What makes McCain so intriguing can’t be captured in numbers. It is the footwork, the balance, the pop time, the body control, the release, the navigation of space on or off the dribble. He has it. He just does.
“I’ve been working on it my whole life now,” McCain said Wednesday. “Shooting is something I’ve always loved to do and been good at. I think having the quick release is going to be extremely helpful being a smaller guard in the league, just being able to get it off quick. It will help me a lot.”
In comparing him to Curry, I am talking mostly about this thing. I don’t know how it will manifest itself at the NBA level. I don’t know if McCain has the potential for anything close to the elite, elite handle and first step that allow Curry to do whatever he wants at whatever time against whatever competition on whatever NBA court. I’m not saying that McCain has a chance to become one of the greatest players who ever lived. I’m simply saying that he has the attributes to become a player in the mold of Curry: an elite shot, the ability to get it off at any time he chooses, and, thus, the ability to become the kind of player who scores at a level that offsets whatever limitations he has on the defensive end.
“Being able to shoot threes at a high volume and be in the high 30s, low 40s [percentage] is maybe the most valuable skill in the NBA,” Morey said. “It’s on the list. So that’s a big, big part of the calculus with Jared, 100 percent, absolutely.”
The point is that McCain is a much different player than a team typically reckons with at No. 16. He has a reasonably high floor, relatively speaking. There will always be a place in the NBA for a guy who can shoot 40% from deep, whether it is his first or 14th season. The Sixers could struggle to find situations where it makes sense to have McCain on the court with a fellow undersized guard in Tyrese Maxey. It is a particularly acute consideration in the near term, and could easily end up a dilemma for however long they remain together.
Duke's Jared McCain (0) drives against Houston's L.J. Cryer (4) during the first half of a Sweet 16 college basketball game in the NCAA Tournament in Dallas, Friday, March 29, 2024.
Brandon Wade / AP
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