Jared McCain Surprised Us All at Summer League

The first-round pick out of Duke did not play in the way that many expected during the games in Vegas, both for better and for worse.

If three weeks ago, Sixers fans were told that Jared McCain would shoot 28.2% from three during his five Summer League games in Vegas, most (understandably) would have been quite worried for their first-round pick out of Duke.

Sure, the Summer League environment is not a definitive one for basketball evaluation. Just one year ago, Victor Wembanyama shot a ghastly 2-for-13 in his first Vegas game, while Kevin Knox absolutely lit things up in July of 2018. Summer League performances can mean something, but they don’t always mean something, if that makes sense. It might not mean anything that McCain shot poorly from three and occasionally struggled to get his jumper off the past two weeks, but it could mean something – and not something good, considering his shooting stroke was easily his No. 1 selling point entering the draft. 

However, where McCain disappointed with the number of outside shots he made, he shined in the areas where some thought him weak. His handle and passing flashed, sporting a near 1.6 assist-to-turnover ratio through five games in Vegas, and looking much more like a lead guard than he ever did during his lone season at Duke (1.6 might not sound like much, but for how turnover prone most young guards can be, it’s a pretty solid positive in McCain’s favor). 

A theory that I floated pre-draft in defense of McCain was that him playing almost exclusively off-ball in college had a lot more to do with the limitations of his Duke teammates than it had to do with his own shortcomings. Watching him shine as a ball handler in Summer League confirmed my suspicions. Jeremy Roach and Tyrese Proctor — McCain’s college backcourt partners — are both fine college basketball guards, but neither is particularly useful without the ball in their hands, especially Proctor. Thus, on a Duke team that needed someone to space the floor without dribbling the air out of the rock, McCain was used more as an off-ball spacer and mover than he was as an on-ball creator. 

His play in Summer League isn’t immediate proof that he’s 100% capable of being a full-time NBA point guard at a moment’s notice, but it was encouraging how well he handled pick and rolls, and how on-point his passing was. He was particularly adept at finding rolling big men, even in a crowded paint, never sitting on the ball for too long, and displaying great vision and placement on his dimes.

McCain also showed fans what might be his signature flashy pass during the Vegas runs — a no-look wrap-around feed that he uses to find centers after launching himself all the way past the baseline and drawing the opposing center in. These passes serve essentially the same function as the assists shown above. The only difference is that they look way cooler, and are just more evidence that McCain can be a primary ball handler in the NBA in due time. 

 Again, though McCain’s reps as a pure point guard at Duke were infrequent, the flashes of passing brilliance were always there. He knows how to fit a bounce pass in between the smallest crevice of the defense, and he’s fully aware of how to leverage the threat of him as a scorer into productive opportunities for his teammates. 

It’s fair to critique how real of a scorer McCain might be after he not only shot 28% from three in Summer League, but also 28% from two-point range. Aside from shooting 15-for-16 (93.8%) from the free throw line, his usually efficient scoring game was simply absent in Vegas. 

Most of that had to do with him clanking wide open threes that he has usually made, though a worryingly large number of the misses were short off the front rim. It might take him a minute to adjust to the longer three-point line given that he’s already a player most would consider below average in raw athleticism. He simply doesn’t have the power in his body to catapult the ball toward the rim with full force yet on some of his attempts. 

From two-point range, it seemed as though his comfort came and went at random times. In some games, he kept missing wide angle floaters where he gained little separation from his defenders, or missing pull-up jumpers where he didn’t have the necessary space to shoot as cleanly as he might’ve preferred. 

However, in other games he flashed his underrated handle and easily broke past whoever was in front of him. His crossovers in particular looked quite good in Vegas, with him being able to shake multiple defenders with good change-of-pace and the ability to dip his shoulder below theirs. None of his drives or finishes scream “superstar ceiling”, but they all show the signs of an offensive talent who is more than just a shooter. 

But ultimately, McCain won’t be a success for the Sixers unless he lights it up from deep in the NBA. He was drafted with the No. 16 overall pick because saying that he was the best shooter in the entire class was a defensible belief. Shooting 41.8% from three on nearly six attempts per game for one of the best teams in the country was McCain’s selling point, not his underrated capability to moonlight as a lead point guard. 

Is Keve Aluma a Keeper?

The concerns over how he’ll get his shots off while being a shorter, slower athlete by NBA standards are real. His shot form — while extremely fundamental and very aesthetically pleasing — is also quite rigid. Whereas someone like Tyrese Maxey can shoot threes with his knees bent at extremely awkward angles, flailing in almost any direction, McCain does not yet possess that flexibility and that comfort with shooting in weird positions. It’s how you end up with things like his airballed pull-up three at the end of the Portland game. 

It’s admirable that McCain wants to be perfectly square to the bucket on every three he takes. When he’s left wide open with ample space around him, he displays a picture-perfect form.

But this is the NBA. Ideal shooting scenarios rarely if ever exist in the middle of game action. McCain is going to be guarded by the best and most athletic defenders in the world. They force you to take shots that are awkward, shots that feel uncomfortable, like a fadeaway with a hand in your face as you drift to the left mid-air. It’s something he’s going to have to work on moving forward (and by the looks of the drill Rico Hines had him running in practice the other week, it seems the Sixers understand this too). 

But overall, I’m still largely encouraged by what I’ve seen from McCain, even in a stretch of games where he uncharacteristically struggled from the three-point line (his defense also wasn’t great, though that’s usually the case for 99% of NBA rookies, no reason to sound the alarms for that). 

The 11 threes he did make in Vegas weren’t just run of the mill, catch-and-shoot triples that any average basketball player could hit. Rather, McCain was cashing in step-backs, relocating off-ball on the fly into open areas, and hitting movement triples off designed actions the Sixers cooked up for him.

There’s no added point bonus for difficulty on made threes, but it means something that McCain’s shots that did go in looked a whole lot like shots the Sixers are going to need him to make in tough NBA-level situations. 

Once McCain is playing alongside Joel Embiid, Maxey, Paul George, and all the other veteran talent the Sixers have to offer, his elite shooting numbers should reappear. He’ll be getting easier looks than he ever saw in Summer League, while also being able to turn to a contested movement triple or a self-created layup from time to time. Though the surface-level performance for McCain in Summer League may have been disappointing, he looked much better at the offensive skills that many feared he didn’t have, which is an extremely encouraging sign. Unless he suffers one of the biggest declines in three-point shooting accuracy in the history of basketball (Markelle Fultz knocks on some wood at this very moment), he’ll bring the spacing the Sixers need, no doubt about it. 

Through any bad stretch of games, a great shooter can never stop believing that the next one’s going in. It didn’t seem like McCain ever lost confidence in his stroke during the past two weeks, and he reaffirmed as much when asked. 

“I’m always gonna believe in my shot. Whether or not it’s going in,” McCain told reporters in Las Vegas. “I work too hard at it to not believe in it, so I’m going to continue to shoot no matter what.” 

He’s still confident in what he brings to this team, and Sixers fans should be too.

---

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.

“The Danny” is brought to you by the Official Realtor Of The Process, Adam Ksebe.