A Breakdown of Why Jared McCain Is Already So Good

Pay no attention to the win-loss record behind the curtain.

Rookies are almost always bad. It’s just a general truth about the NBA that holds up year after year. 

2017 Joel Embiid and 2024 Victor Wembanyama already being two of the best centers in the world the moment they entered the league were exceptions, not the rule. More often than not, the best rookies look like 2021 Tyrese Maxey did — capable of brilliant flashes that portend to a great future, but not consistently and reliably good yet on an everyday basis. 

Lately, Jared McCain has taken that adage and stuffed it in the garbage can. Over his last four games, the Sixers’ rookie is averaging 28 points and 4.5 assists on 51-44-100 shooting splits, which is the equivalent to setting fire to the sun. Per Sam DiGiovanni, the only other two rookies in NBA history to post a stretch with those same numbers and shooting splits were 2019 Trae Young and 1980 Larry Bird. Pretty solid company.

McCain has obviously been superb, so much so that just gushing about how great he’s been doesn’t really accomplish much. Rather, it’s better to take a deep look and figure out why McCain has broken out as the best rookie in the league through the season’s first month.  

Let’s start with McCain’s selling point from the moment he burst onto the scene at Duke — his deadly three-point shot. He’s been scorching the nets ever since breaking out of his early season shooting slump, and is now up over 40% from three for the season on 62 total attempts. McCain made a small yet vital adjustment not in his shooting form up top, but in how he sets his feet before the shot. He’s stopped trying to do the rhythmic 1-2 step into his jumpers, and is instead doing a two-foot hop to set himself up right before he launches a three. Watch these clips and keep a close eye on how McCain sets up his feet right before he releases his shot. 

The two-foot hop can be awkward for some, but it helps a player get their shot off quicker and with more power, both things that are vital for McCain given his small stature. The 1-2 step is more classically suited for someone like Robert Covington — a tall sniper who isn’t really bothered by having a hand near his face and just needs some rhythm to step into his shot. It’s impressive how quickly McCain figured out that hopping into his shot, as well as spamming no-dip threes like Nico Batum from last season, would be vital to his NBA success. 

But whereas the three-pointer was expected to be McCain’s strength, his interior scoring has been an unexpected blessing. Per Synergy, McCain is shooting 61.1% on off-the-dribble 2-point jumpers. For comparison, Synergy has DeMar DeRozan shooting 55.8% on those same types of shots this season. Y’know, the ones DeRozan has made his entire reputation in the NBA on. (Obviously worth mentioning that McCain has only taken 18 of those shots to DeRozan’s 86, but the accuracy in his small sample is impressive nonetheless.) 

It’s a remarkable development – and one that again is connected to how McCain uses his feet while attacking defenders. Watch these two mid-range buckets he scored against Charlotte and see if you can tell the advantage the rookie is creating. 

It’s hard to notice unless you replay the shots multiple times over, but McCain’s strength relies in how much lower he gets to the floor than his defenders. Take a look at this still shot from his bucket over LaMelo. While the Ball brother is standing upright, McCain’s shin is making a perfect 90 degree angle to the floor. 

That is not normal, even by NBA standards. If any one of us regular folk tried to do that while moving full speed on a basketball court, odds are our knees would explode in seven different directions. 

“Low man wins” is a truism often reserved for football, but it holds true on the basketball court in one-on-one settings as well. Defenders are taught to get low in their stance because if the offensive player gets lower than them, they can put their shoulder out in front and blow by them on their way to the rim. By McCain always being the low man, his defenders either can’t keep him in front, or have to back up enough that he always gets space for the little step-back middy that’s already become his patented shot. 

Again, look at how Seth Curry’s legs are hardly bent as he tries to slide on defense, while McCain has planted his feet in such a violent direction that it looks like he’s a defensive end. 

McCain turns these isolations into physics problems that are almost impossible for defenders to solve. Stay too far back, and McCain rises up for three. Get too close, and he always has the leverage needed to create space. 

We often think that for someone so small to be a great scorer inside, they have to be a good athlete. And when we think of athleticism, we often think of someone like Tyrese Maxey, who has a lightning quick first step, a condor-like wingspan, and can jump out of the gym.

Because McCain doesn’t have any of those specific traits, he gets pegged as an unathletic player. However, that’s a misnomer. A better description for McCain would be that he has non-traditional athleticism. 

It’s why the Jalen Brunson comparisons aren’t 100% outlandish. Neither are great run-and-jump athletes. Rather, they have great strength, great mid-air body control, and remarkable flexibility. Those are all athletic traits, they’re just not as flashy as the dudes who can sprint 20 MPH with the ball in their hands and jump up near the top of the backboard. Both keep getting their shots off over bigger defenders, and in the moment you’re not quite sure how they keep getting away with it. 

I said it when he was drafted, and I’ll say it again — McCain so clearly has a great understanding of what he can and can’t do. You can hear it in the way he talks at press conferences too. He knows he isn’t the tallest or the quickest, and that he has to use different tricks to get past those limitations. It’s why he practices no-dip threes at every single shootaround. It’s why he uses all of those funky step-throughs and inside hand finishes. 

McCain is extremely confident. That was apparent even before he blew up the past week. Yet, he has no false delusions about himself as a player. He knows what he excels at, and it’s clear in the results that he’s trained very hard to perfect every one of his moves. He was using the same moves in high school and at Duke, and even now, they’re working against some of the best defenders in the NBA. 

There’s still plenty of areas to improve on for the young star. There’s a reason I didn’t share any clips of him on the defensive end of the floor: His strength keeps him from being bullied in the post, but quick-twitch guards can leave him in the dust, and no one is all that bothered by his shot contests. Likewise, though he makes the most of his non-traditional athleticism, McCain somewhat literally comes up short against defenders due to his lack of size and vertical leaping ability, throwing up awkward-looking misses from the paint.

Still, what he’s done through his first month of professional basketball is near unprecedented. He has the 18th-best Box Plus-Minus (BPM) in the entire NBA among players with at least 150 minutes this season. He ranks in the 90th percentile in Offensive Estimated Plus-Minus (EPM). The all-in-one metrics back up the film. McCain isn’t just gunning to juice raw box score stats. He’s scoring and creating in ways that actively help his team, even if the Sixers aren’t actually winning many games yet. 

From the change in his three-point shot footwork, to how proactive he is in always getting low in his drives, the reason McCain is so good is that he himself fully understands what about his game is so good. He hyper-fixates and adjusts those little details because he realizes that his work on the margins is vital to his success. He can’t coast on just having superior physical talent to his peers. Rather, he needs to outpace them in his finesse and his craft, in his perfection of all the minutiae that happens on a basketball court. 

It’s still not set in stone that McCain is or will be a star. Rookies can go up and down at a moment’s notice, so no one should be shocked if McCain eventually hits a cold streak as opponents deepen their scouting report on how to stop him. Even then, it would take fall-off of almost unforeseen proportions for McCain’s rookie year to turn into a letdown at this point. He’s surpassed the expectations of even those who were highest on him entering the season, and right now, he looks like the steal of the 2024 NBA Draft, and a potential franchise cornerstone.

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Daniel Olinger is a writer for the Rights To Ricky Sanchez, and author of “The Danny” column, even though he refuses to be called that in person. He can be followed on X @dan_olinger.

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