Welcome to our Sixers player preview series! Between now and Sixers Media Day on Sep. 30, we will preview each one of the 14 players on the team's standard roster, posing two critical questions that will help determine their fate in 2024-25 before making a prediction about the player's season to come.
Up first is the team's first-round pick from the 2024 NBA Draft: rookie guard Jared McCain, who enters Philadelphia with a reputation as a knock-down shooter with plenty of question marks elsewhere.
Does McCain have enough skills to earn a consistent role?
Anybody who watched McCain at Duke -- or even before that -- knows that shooting is his calling card. In today's NBA, that is of massive importance, but it does not make someone a rotation-caliber player on its own. And the reason McCain was available at No. 16 overall despite his outstanding jumper is that other aspects of his game are lagging far behind.
McCain is only 6-foot-3 with a wingspan that is nearly the exact same, and does not have any sort of outlier athleticism. That limits his viability and versatility as a defender. That frame resembles one of a primary ball-handler, but McCain is very much an off-ball guard. He only averaged 1.9 assists per game with the Blue Devils, and because of his limited burst, McCain is not able to consistently create advantages or generate offense as a ball-handler.
So, if McCain is a liability (or something close to that) on defense and a unitasker on offense, how could he become a consistent rotation piece at any point in 2024-25? It boils down to this...
Just how good will the three-point shooting be?
In a sense, it feels odd for one of the two pivotal questions about McCain to pertain to his one skill that is undoubtedly ready to translate to the NBA. Even though he often failed to show it during Summer League, McCain is going to enter the NBA with the ability to be a tremendous three-point shooter on both spot-up opportunities and on movement. That level of shooting versatility in one player can do wonders for any offense, especially one with three high-usage stars able to set the table.
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McCain entered his lone season at Duke with the reputation of a true marksman, and he made good on it, knocking down 41.4 percent of his three-point tries on 5.8 attempts per game while also making 88.5 percent of his free throws. His upside as a shooter is good enough that, if he reaches it for any stretch of games, he would become an instant rotation-caliber player -- a string of possessions where McCain shakes free and knocks down threes can entirely change the complexion of a game.
But given his deficiencies in other facets of the game, he has to be a marvelous shooter to get by right now. If he is just a good three-point shooter -- or even a very good one -- it will be hard for that to outweigh his weaknesses as a defender and shot creator, for example. For McCain to stick as a rotation player in his rookie season, he needs to instantly look like one of the single best long-range snipers in the entire NBA. And while that feels unlikely, he is one of the few players in recent years to enter the league having such a possibility within his range of outcomes.
Prediction
McCain will have a stint in the regular rotation that lasts at least a dozen games and show some exciting flashes, but will not log any rotation minutes in the playoffs.
Because of the amount of weaknesses in McCain's game right now, it remains difficult to imagine him being a quality rotation player for anything close to an entire season. But for a stretch of, say, 12-15 games? It is easily more plausible than one might think for a few reasons.
First of all, when McCain does get a crack at minutes, all he has to do is check in and shoot the lights out to earn another opportunity. It is not dissimilar to the path taken by Landry Shamet, who quickly carved out a role for the Sixers as a rookie in 2018 as a three-point shooting specialist.
It is also worth considering that McCain is likely first in line for playing time should a rotation regular at either guard position go down with an injury or need a night off, and the team's reserve guards are slated to be Kyle Lowry, who will turn 39 years old in March, and Eric Gordon, a soon-to-be 36-year-old with a very lengthy injury history. The idea that either one of those players could have a lengthy absence is easily feasible, and particularly if it is Gordon, who fills an archetype very similar to McCain, the rookie should have a chance to help the Sixers win games.
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