I Will Never Let the Jared McCain Trade Go

Spike vows to stay mad about the Sixers' one big deadline deal in this week's Corner Three.

We got an email once to the pod asking when I was going to “give it a rest” regarding Ben Simmons. I said never. I said, I believe, “I would have to die.”

As stubborn as I am, I do let things go, change my mind, move on, etc… But when I dig in my heels, I really dig in my heels. This is where we are on the Jared McCain trade. I’m sorry, I just cannot let it go.

I’m quite sure I’d feel this way if he’d spent his first three games with the Thunder on the bench. But seeing him flying around screens, finishing at the rim, making the right pass, and basically looking like a functional basketball player again immediately is infuriating. Every day I get just a little more pissed off.

It was this clip from Thunder coach Mark Daigneault that really put me over the edge. “I mean, what [McCain is] doing is very difficult,” Daigneault expressed. “It’s an unexpected situation for him. He’s joining a team that has had success together — a lot of continuity — and he looks like he has been here… I think it’s a credit to the fact that he is confident, aggressive, but also playing inside of what we do. It reminds me in the way that Caruso [and] Hartenstein were at the beginning last year. [It] reminds me [of] the way Mitchell was able to integrate kind of seamlessly. Those guys just plug into the system, and they look like they’ve been here for a long time. I think it’s credit to his sense, awareness, team orientation, IQ. He has done a great job.”

He just got to OKC and he’s “able to integrate seamlessly” and “look like he’s been there for a long time.” But somehow in Philadelphia every time he was out there he looked like the fifth guy on a team running full-court pickup who they called over because they only had four, and those four had been playing together forever. Daigneault has him running around screens, the ball in his hands, whatever, while Rock N’ Roll Coach had him standing in the corner, scared for his life. I’m convinced Nurse never liked him, and never really made an effort to get him going.

Surely, there’s a chance McCain never fully gets back from his knee injury and just sort of floats around the league for seven years. But there’s also a chance he’s the guy we saw last year, even a 5% or 10% chance. It’s making me insane. But hey, at least we sold high.

Team Ricky

• Quite a performance from Mike on Wednesday night’s pod after (during) the Knicks game. I envy Mike’s ability to get so, so, so mad after a regular season loss. I’m pretty sure he called the team “dickless.”

• AU thinks the trade deadline was a sign that the Sixers don’t think the Sixers are that good. I’m not sure I totally agree with him, but I do agree that they’re probably not that good. They’re at the All-Star break and their point differential is 0.3.

• We’re going back through some Carl Landry Record Club album suggestions we missed, and one of them is Queensryche’s Operation: Mindcrime. We had a great time talking about it.

Non-Team Ricky Related Sixers Content

• Still trying to figure out why this Ben Simmons video got made, and why all of a sudden he has an Australian accent? Instead of spending the money on this video, just give it to me. I’ll find a home for it.

• Doc Rivers is a finalist for the Hall Of Fame. What an outstanding job he’s done of convincing everyone that he’s a great coach, or at the very least, he’ll act like you’re a total asshole if you don’t say he is.

• Shake Milton said that the MVP version of Joel Embiid was the best basketball player he’s ever seen. No matter how Embiid’s time in Philadelphia ends, I’m sort of looking for the time about seven years after his career is done when we can look back at the top version of Embiid and just talk about how awesome he was.