October 17, 2024
Bill Streicher/Imagn Images
The Sixers' preseason victory Wednesday night was overwhelmingly encouraging, until rookie Jared McCain took a brutal fall.
All was well for the Sixers, with four more minutes until they could call it a night Wednesday after a successful victory over the Brooklyn Nets.
Suddenly, things took a turn for the worse: rookie guard Jared McCain, perhaps the star of the team's training camp and preseason to date, took a hard fall to the ground and was clearly in an immense amount of pain. It took McCain a couple of minutes just to sit up and another to be helped to his feet.
Immediately after the game, the Sixers said McCain was being evaluated by the medical staff, including for a concussion.
"It was rough," Sixers head coach Nick Nurse said of McCain's fall after the game, before disclosing that McCain was headed to a hospital to be checked out. "He was having trouble breathing there. Maybe he got the wind knocked out of him. Not sure what was going on there, but I've never quite seen one like that before. Let's hope he's okay and see what the report is from the hospital."
MORE: Instant observations: Sixers fly high in preseason victory over Nets
A fresh batch of additional noteworthy quotes from Nurse's postgame media availability on Wednesday night:
• Nurse on if he feels the Sixers scheduled too many preseason games (Friday night's contest in Orlando will be their sixth and final exhibition) in light of injuries to McCain and Paul George:
"I don't think we've played those guys a ton. We've tried to schedule this so we could get a look at some people -- a lot of people -- and other things. A couple of freak injuries, it's not because they're playing too many minutes or any of that kind of stuff. So, just unlucky, and hopefully get all that unluckiness out of the way and move forward."
• Nurse on a strong performance from KJ Martin, who entered the starting lineup in place of George:
"He was good, really good... Give him a chance to start, I thought he was really tough defensively, he was good on the glass as well. He finishes down there, and he plays with a pretty good sense of knowing what's going on out there, too."
• Nurse on his impressions of Kelly Oubre Jr. as the veteran swingman enters his second year with the Sixers, following Oubre's game-high 18-point performance:
"He's a pretty good attacking player, and we have worked with him a lot on attacking the rim and playing through some of the physicality... He just looks really comfortable out there. Teams have seemed to play off him a bit, and when he's going, he can rise up and hit those."
• Nurse singling out two players when asked about the Sixers' depth pieces dominating a Brooklyn lineup led by four projected Nets starters for much of Wednesday's fourth quarter:
"It's really hard to read anything into preseason... But Justin [Edwards] has done nothing but play solid the whole preseason. He's played really good defensively, he's made really good decisions offensively. And it was really nice to see [Adem] Bona -- we haven't seen much of his running and his pop, and it was nice to see him up there grabbing tough rebounds, made a couple really good offensive plays, that was really good to see out of him because we hadn't seen it yet. So it was nice to see him, because we're going to need him."
MORE: Sixers player previews: Critical questions and predictions for each member of the 2024-25 roster
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