We're Going to Have to Be Patient With Jared McCain
Spike preaches a little holiday perspective on our second-year guard's situation.
Jared McCain’s return to the form that we saw last year is going to take much longer than we hoped, and we’re all going to have to get used to it.
Admittedly, I was, am, and will be as high or higher on McCain than most people. I own everything I said, I believe it’s true, and I will be excited when it happens. And admittedly, the first 19 games of the season for McCain have not done much to make me look smart.
But that’s all it’s been, 19 games this season. He’s played 42 games in his career, and six of them have been fewer than 10 minutes on the court. And the 19 games this season have come after a surgery that we probably have not given proper context to.
There are really two kinds of surgeries you can have when you’ve got a meniscus tear. There is the meniscectomy, which is when there is a bit of the torn piece of meniscus that’s giving the person trouble and it’s just removed. This type of surgery typically has a player returning in about six weeks. The good thing about the surgery is players return sooner, the bad thing is that the meniscus never grows back and it can make it more likely that the player experiences chronic/arthritic conditions with the knee eventually. The second surgery, what McCain had, is the meniscus repair surgery, where instead of removing the damaged piece of cartilage, they repair it, preserving it for the future. This is the good news. The bad news is that rehab is longer, more difficult, and often times prevents the player from reaching their normal peak mobility and strength for sometimes up to a year after they’re recovered.
(As an aside, the surgeon is usually unaware of whether they can perform the repair surgery until they go in there to operate. Whether they can even perform that surgery, as well as the age, size, position of the person having the surgery are factors as well.)
The fact is that the second half of Jared McCain’s season in 24-25, and a large portion of the offseason, was just spent rehabbing the knee to even get on the court. Time he could have been spending getting better at basketball, he spent rehabbing his knee. The fact is, many players who return from meniscus repair surgery do not get back to “normal” until the season after the season they return. That’s if there are no extenuating circumstances. But there are a few with McCain.
The first circumstance that has not helped is that as training camp began, McCain tore the UCL in his thumb, sidelining him again and forcing him to miss all of camp. Additionally, the Sixers drafted VJ Edgecombe, who plays much differently than McCain, is another guard who the team wants to fit into its rotation (and rightly so, VJ is awesome). There is also Quentin Grimes, who probably has a lower ceiling than McCain, but at this point is far more developed and helpful, who was not on the team when McCain was excelling last season. There is also the fact that Maxey has gotten better, taking the leap to superstardom and demanding to be on the court basically as much as humanly possible.
There is also the fact that the Sixers are a good team, who need to win games, and are forced to balance the development of their young players with actually willing games. Finally, I do believe that Nick Nurse is sort of locked in on some priors on McCain that might make it less likely that he finds the same nuggets of optimism in little things than he might if he was always a believer. To be clear, I think Nurse has handled the situation well this year, but we’re all human.
I know this all sounds like a bunch of excuse-making for a guy who said McCain can be a top fifteen player. Maybe it is, but it’s also true. All of it is true. Which brings us to right now.
Jared McCain, right now, is nowhere near where he was physically last year. No, he wasn’t as fast as peak Lillard or as strong as peak Harden, but it doesn’t take much watching of this to see that the guy we’re seeing this year is not yet physically the guy we saw last year. Just watch the video of McCain highlights from last year (it’s a fun eight minutes). It’s staring you right in the face.
So, what does this mean? It truly depends how you look at it. There are a few ways to be pessimistic.
1. You could look at it and say, “he’s never going to get back to that place physically, he’s never going to be the same guy.” I don’t think the evidence supports this, but it’s certainly possible. Jeremy Lin was probably never the same guy after meniscus surgery ended his dream season with the Knicks (even though he ended up with a far more serious knee injury as well). I don’t think this is likely, but it’s a valid thought.
2. You could look at it and say, “we’ve got VJ now, I want to keep Grimes too, we don’t really have time for the McCain thing, and even if we did he’s not really necessary.” I don’t agree with this necessarily, but it’s a valid way to think about it.
3. You could say “this year is proof he was not that good last year, and it was just good stats/bad team.” I don’t buy this one at all. I think it’s crazy. I know what I saw, we all know what we saw. That wasn’t a fluke, the guy was legitimately amazing in his first couple months of action at just age 19.
I think trading Jared McCain at this point would be an enormous mistake that the Sixers will regret. I think he’s going to be a star (health allowing), and we would want to stab our eyes out with forks every time we see him lighting someone up. Hell, we do that with Isaiah Joe who is a fine player but truly not that good when all is said and done. We’d also potentially be dealing him when his value is likely lower than it was when he was the favorite to win rookie of the year last season, and than it will be in the future.
I think McCain’s progression this year has been slow but it’s been there. He looks much better than he did six weeks ago, and seems to have the right attitude about fitting in. He never forces things when he’s in there, he’s concentrating on defense and rebounding (he sneakily gets into passing lanes at a noticeable rate). He played horribly as every Sixers player did against the Nets, but had nine rebounds (most of any starter), four assists (most of any starter) and two steals. If one of the early threes drops and a layup goes in we’re talking about the third straight impressive McCain game. The development is going to continue to be slower and more uneven than we’d like, and he might not really look like himself till next season.
But the reality of the Sixers situation may call for them to make a decision on his future with the team sooner than I’d like. Perhaps they’re given the opportunity to get off of Joel’s contract and the team they’re dealing with likes McCain. Perhaps (less likely but who knows), Embiid begins to play more frequently and reliably and they’re given a chance to upgrade the current roster by trading McCain and giving themselves a chance to get out of the East this year. Perhaps the team just simply doesn’t believe he can co-exist with Maxey and Edgecombe in a meaningful way. All of these results have a different level of bummer to them.
But I’m telling you, and I believe it wholeheartedly, Jared McCain is still going to be an outrageous player. I know what I saw last season and I know what’s in there. I just hope he has the chance to do it for the Sixers.