The Jared McCain Trade Is Aging Worse By the Day for the Sixers

The short-handed Sixers beat the tanking, injury-ravaged Memphis Grizzlies on Tuesday night to stop their two-game skid, but that victory might only stanch the bleeding.

On Thursday, the Sixers head to Detroit to face the Eastern Conference-leading Pistons. They'll do so without Paul George, who's still suspended for the next two weeks, Joel Embiid, who's missed the past six games with an oblique injury, and Tyrese Maxey, whom the Sixers just learned will be out for at least the next three weeks with a tendon injury in his right pinky finger.

If not for Bam Adebayo's historic 83-point game against the Washington Wizards, Cam Payne might be the talk of the NBA on Tuesday. He finished with 32 points on 9-of-10 shooting, including a career-best 8-of-8 from deep, in 30 minutes off the bench against Memphis.

The odds of that being replicable are approximately zero. Coming into Tuesday, Payne had 44 total points on 17-of-58 shooting in 150 minutes across 10 games with the Sixers this season.

As Gina Mizell of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote leading into Tuesday's game, the Sixers need more of these types of performances from Payne, especially with Maxey now sidelined for the next few weeks. VJ Edgecombe returned from his lumbar contusion Tuesday, but the Sixers need more microwave scoring off the bench with all three of their max-contract stars sidelined.

Payne is the best candidate left for that role. That's because of the own-goal that the Sixers committed at the trade deadline when they "sold high" on Jared McCain.

Is the backcourt overcrowded now?

Among the justifications that team president Daryl Morey gave for the McCain trade—aside from the obvious luxury-tax ramifications that he glossed over—was the crowded state of the Sixers' backcourt.

"Our path here is a little bit muted relative to where his path could be on another team," Morey said. "It would be hard to get to starter quality, which is the return we got."

Morey added that the haul the Sixers received for McCain—a 2026 first-round pick likely via the Houston Rockets and three future second-round picks—was "for a starter-quality player on a good team. It's actually above that." He also pointed out that few other players fetched a first-round pick at the trade deadline at all.

The implication, though, is that McCain was buried behind Maxey and Edgecombe and had no path to a starting job in Philly. If he topped out as a high-end backup/Sixth Man of the Year candidate, that might limit the types of trade offers that the Sixers eventually got for him.

That is, assuming everything stayed static in the Sixers' backcourt. But there was no way to be certain of that, even at the trade deadline.

Maxey's finger injury was fluky and shouldn't have long-term ramifications, although trading McCain did leave the Sixers extremely vulnerable. Edgecombe, Quentin Grimes and Kyle Lowry were their only three other guards under contract at the time of the trade, although they likely had an inkling about Payne and two-way signee Dalen Terry.

Perhaps they concluded that Grimes, Payne, Terry and a reserve-guard-by-committee approach could replace what McCain brought to the table. Seeing as he averaged only 6.6 points on 38.5% shooting during his 37 games with the Sixers this season, that production wouldn't be difficult to replace.

The issue is whether that was the real McCain, or whether he would eventually get back to being the player who took the league by storm as a rookie last season.

The Sixers are learning that answer the hard way in Oklahoma City.

McCain thriving in OKC

In 14 games with the Thunder, McCain is averaging 11.8 points while shooting 47.5% overall and 43.3% from deep in only 19.1 minutes per game. In their 129-126 win over the Denver Nuggets on Monday night, he knocked down a pair of three-pointers in the final five minutes of the game to give the Thunder some additional breathing room.

As we and others have covered, the Thunder are taking advantage of McCain's movement shooting far more than the Sixers did. They also have the defensive personnel on the wing and in the frontcourt to cover up for his issues on that end of the floor. It's a much better fit for his skill set.

The Sixers couldn't have predicted Maxey's injury when they made the McCain trade, but Maxey was averaging a league-leading 38.3 minutes per game this season in an era when only three players are even averaging 36. They've been flirting with disaster all season by overtaxing him to that extent, and it finally bit them Saturday, albeit in a fluky way.

If the Sixers still had McCain, they would have the opportunity to fully unleash him and Edgecombe alongside Grimes for as long as Maxey was sidelined. McCain recently told CBS Sports' James Herbert that it was hard for him to find a rhythm this season "playing with really great players and getting little short spurts."

"There were a few games, for sure, that I felt great," he added. "I feel like those were the ones where I got to play a little extended minutes, play through some mistakes."

These next few weeks would have been a perfect chance to let McCain do exactly that. Instead, he's helping the reigning champions potentially defend their title this year.

To be clear, McCain wouldn't have meaningfully altered the Sixers' trajectory this year. They're likely drawing dead against any non-tanking teams as long as all three of their max-contract stars are out. But he would have made them far more entertaining to watch in this Maxey-less stretch. He also would have gotten a chance to bolster his trade value by showing out in a larger role.

McCain might have gotten that chance next year regardless. If the Sixers don't re-sign Grimes in free agency this offseason, they'll have to completely overhaul their backcourt behind Maxey and Edgecombe last year.

Having McCain on a cost-controlled, rookie-scale contract for two more years could have been a major asset for a cap-strapped team with three max contracts on its books. Instead, the Sixers flipped him for draft capital that they feel "sets us up better to set up the team in the future better," according to Morey.

The pressure is only rising for this front office to prove that.

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Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac and salary-cap information via RealGM.

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