OKC Thunder Saw Big Lift From Jared McCain, Sam Presti Excited About Future

The Oklahoma City Thunder made a great move at the NBA Trade Deadline to nab Jared McCain from the Philadelphia 76ers. A move that netted the Thunder a highly thought of prospect from the 2024 NBA Draft, who Oklahoma City had circled at the time and accomplished its goal of staying under the tax to set up the Bricktown Ballers future. While improving its roster, the Thunder did not dip into the luxury tax, an avoidable line in the future, meaning that they will not face any repeater tax team penalties until the new CBA is in place, where it is unknown just how restrictive team building will be.

McCain was thought of as a move for the future at the time and he largely still is. Though the second-year guard hit the ground running in Oklahoma City before making a massive impact in the playoffs. During the Thunder's second-round sweep of the Los Angeles Lakers, McCain went 4-for-5 from 3-point land in Game 1 and Game 2 to flip the contests into blowout affairs.

While it was a great ending to the season, even seeing the Duke product start in the Western Conference Finals due to injuries, the future outlook with McCain is still the selling point of the move. A year ago, the guard was the front runner for the rookie of the year award before suffering a knee injury. There is an ultra high ceiling on what McCain can be and Thunder General Manager Sam Presti did not shy away from that at his end of season press conference.

"Yeah, I followed Jared [McCain] since he was in high school and have always thought very highly of him, just his makeup, his approach, his game. I've always felt like he's a guy that contributes to winning. I do think that with kind of the way he got on the train, as you were saying, his EQ is extremely high. There aren't many people that I would choose to try to assimilate into our particular team in the middle of the year, especially because the continuity issue was already very fractured because we didn't know who was playing, and there the thought of we could really use another person because every night we're kind of shorthanded. Certainly couldn't have forecasted the situation we were going to be in in the postseason. He was very, very helpful in that," Presti said. "But he had the right mindset, I think, to walk into a team like ours and in the right game. But I think going forward there's a more balanced player in there and not just a guy that's going to come off and be able to hit shots like that. He really understands the game. He understands winning. He'll put his body out there."

McCain displayed great poise and maturity in big moments of the NBA Playoffs and leaves everyone encouraged for what a full season with the guard will look like around this Thunder team projected to be one of the NBA's title favorites next season.

"I'm looking forward to a full summer with him, full training camp, and just seeing really how he accents our full team. I don't know how many games he played with Jalen, but I don't think it was very many. With our starters, he would have had to be here for one of those eight games, so I'm not sure if he was or he wasn't," Presti explained. "That's one of the things that's a little troubling when you're looking at learning from each one of these series that we're in. You're just not getting to see how we all look when fully constituted, especially in the bigger games like that in the postseason. It's really, really helpful and informative."

McCain offers the ability for Oklahoma City to have another ball handler on the floor and for as great as he was in the second half of this season in his role, the Thunder have not scratched the surface of what he could be in Bricktown. McCain hasn't even spent much time with the best players on this Oklahoma City roster.

"I think having another ball handler out there really would have not just helped everyone -- Shai for sure -- but it really would have helped Chet quite a bit too, you know what I'm saying? So different personnel, you get a different look at things. We certainly can't -- you can't build your approach or evaluate or strategize your approach going forward for a team that's missing Ajay and Jalen, right? We can't build the team that way based on what we learned in that series," Presti detailed. "It was very helpful, we learned a lot in that series, as we did in L.A., as we did against Phoenix, Indiana, Minnesota, all down the line, Denver. We learn in every one of those, but you don't want to overlearn the team when it's missing those types of players because I think it can warp your perception of the other players, and also we want to be playing with everybody. That's the idea. And McCain fits right into that in so many ways."

Presti then detailed the CBA impact of making this move at the trade deadline and why the swap and timing of it was so perfect for Oklahoma City.

"The other thing about that transaction is we were able to orchestrate that without going to luxury tax, which is a big factor because now we continue to maintain the fact we won't be a repeater tax, repeater team until we're in the new arena and we have a new CBA. So that was important for us to be able to follow that threshold but still be able to add a player of that caliber," Presti revealed.

McCain enters October's training camp as a fan favorite and a player everyone will be glued to as the season unfolds.

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