Ricky Council, Jared McCain and More — Checking In on the Summer League Sixers
Ricky Council, Jared McCain and More — Checking In on the Summer League Sixers
The Danny’s obsession with the NBA Draft marches forward.
Two things are happening right now — the Summer League Sixers just wrapped up their play in Salt Lake City and are now headed to Vegas, and Joel Embiid is playing for Team USA in preparation for the Paris Olympics.
If you’re like me, you’ve mostly ignored the latter due to the unbelievably toxic way Embiid playing for the country he’s lived in for 14 years has been talked about — and have instead focused on Jared McCain, Ricky Council and the rest of the summer Sixers.
Here’s a quick rundown of how our guys looked out in Utah for three games this week.
Ricky Council IV
Whenever a second- or third-year player returns for Summer League action, they should look hilariously dominant.
Think back to the summer of ‘21, when Tyrese Maxey returned to Vegas following the conclusion of his rookie year, only to play a grand total of two games before the Sixers booked his return flight home. Maxey came in, beat the crap out of players roughly a year younger than him, and proved all that he needed to prove to Philadelphia brass.
Council wasn’t playing at Maxey-level in Salt Lake City, but he was pretty close to it for certain stretches, with his 19-point performance in the fourth quarter against OKC being the obvious standout.
C4 was occasionally forcing his drives and getting the ball ripped away from him by off-ball defenders, and he was the culprit who forgot to box out Jaylen Wells when the Sixers lost to the Grizzlies on a putback buzzer beater. But he’s still an immense positive every time he’s on the floor because he’s simply too dominant of an athlete to be contained.
He racked up 16 free throw attempts across the three nights, shot a combined 8-for-19 from three (42.1 3PT%), and averaged 18.7 points per game, the third-highest average among all players at the event. Council also reinforce a truth that all Sixers’ fans already knew — he 1000% deserves to be in next year’s Dunk Contest.
He did a self-lob to himself off the bounce on a fast break and can crank out two-handed reverse jams at a moment’s notice. It’s insane.
I understand Spike’s concern that the Sixers need Council to be more normal than he actually is to crack the usual rotation. It would be nice if his three-point shot was consistently accurate instead of wavering between quarters where he can’t hit the rim and quarters where he can’t miss.
But there’s value in being this much of an outlier athlete and putting fear in defenses every time you dribble the ball, which C4 does (not to mention, he’s made wild improvements as a passer since his days at Arkansas). Put him on an NBA floor with much improved spacing next to real NBA rotation players, and his downhill, bowling ball-style drives will look even better.
Jared McCain
The Sixers’ first-round pick unfortunately concluded his time in SLC with by far his worst performance of the three games, but overall what McCain showed was a huge plus.
He did a great job of changing pace on his drives and finishing in the paint in the opening game against OKC, he flashed his immense potential as a shooter against Memphis, and through all three games, he looked like a better ball handler and passer than he ever did at Duke. McCain is an immensely skilled offensive player, and one who pretty effortlessly glides between roles as an on-ball creator and an off-ball scorer.
(Yes, I included McCain’s missed no-dip three there at the end because I loved it anyway).
Now McCain was far from perfect. As many noted online, his defense was pretty rough for the majority of the action (though playing in the Sixers’ bizarre 2-3 zone certainly didn’t help), and he’s just never going to look like the twitchy, explosive athlete most NBA fans want their guards to be. He missed floaters and flip shots in the exact method one would expect a small, relatively slow guard to miss them — by not getting all the way to the cup, trying to float the ball over a taller man at an inopportune angle, and jumping off his wrong foot in hopes of throwing the defender off, only to realize he was swallowed up by the length anyway.
McCain has an unbelievably smooth jumper, and did hit a mid-range bucket in the past three games, but he’s not the most fluid or flexible pulling up in contested areas. He often looked uncomfortable in situations where he couldn’t get all the way to the rim with his man pinned behind his shoulder, or find a clean open space to shoot his preferred three-pointers. Getting more adept at using that push shot floater he missed in the clips above will be key to unlocking his offensive ceiling in the long-run.
Granted, most of these could be non-factors for McCain in year one. With Tyrese Maxey and Kyle Lowry on the roster, he’ll rarely ever need to step in as the team’s primary ball handler, and more often he’ll get to run off screens and cash in jumpers via the advantages created for him by Philadelphia’s superstars.
He didn’t look perfect in Utah, but he still looked good at the exact same things he was great at at Duke, and flashed even more potential as a dribbler and penetrator than his biggest fans might’ve projected.
Adem Bona
Bona played exactly as advertised this past week.
He hustled for loose balls and rebounded like a man possessed. He tried to block every single layup that has ever existed (and succeeded three times per game, for what it’s worth). He tried to dunk the ball almost every time he caught it. He also didn’t catch the ball a few times because his hands are going to need a lot of work. He committed a whopping 13 fouls, several of which made him look like he was auditioning for a spot in SlamBall.
Just watch all the following clips from Bona and you’ll quickly understand what he’s all about. Some plays he looks like an S-tier rim protector and defensive savant. On others it looks like he might have been temporarily transported to a Looney Tunes episode. There’s really nothing like it.
Much like McCain, he’s exactly who we thought he was — a guy who will be a delightful backup center down the line, and could even fill in for the Sixers now should Embiid or Andre Drummond miss any time. With Paul Reed now in Detroit, Bona is a wonderful heir to the BBall throne.
Jeff Dowtin Jr.
Ruthlessly efficient buckets is the best description for how Dowtin played this past week. He averaged 17 points per game on a ludicrous 70 TS%, controlling each game with a smooth in-between game in the pick and roll.
Dowtin does not have some hidden ceiling that could drastically change the Sixers’ future should he stick with the team moving forward. He’s 27 years old, and more than anything plays like a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none point guard.
But he is extremely reliable for what he is — a fourth/fifth guard who’s just outside the normal rotation. Should a starter or key bench piece in the backcourt get hurt, there are few better reserve options than Dowtin.
Justin Edwards
The good news is that Edwards shot 3-for-7 from three in Utah, showing off that same reliable lefty stroke that he did with Kentucky last season.
The bad news is that he shot 4-for-11 on two-pointers, only attempted one free throw, and committed 13 fouls in three games.
It’s in line with what Mike and I said on The Ricky recapping the second round of the NBA Draft and the Sixers’ UDFA signings — Edwards is a 6-foot-6 wing who can hit open threes, and that alone has some value. But his drives just aren’t very good at the moment, and they haven’t shown a ton of promise of getting better. He needs to work on finding open teammates after touching the paint, and finding ways to use either strength or skill to finish contested shots at the rim, as he just doesn’t have the vertical pop necessary for tough at-rim shots.
As long as he keeps making his open threes, he’s definitely worthy of major playing time with the Blue Coats this next season, and if he ever straightens out his driving issues, working his way up the Sixers’ roster hierarchy won’t be impossible for him.
David Jones
Here’s what Sixers fans need to remember about David Jones — the dude is an absolute maniac when it comes to fighting for rebounds. Putting him on the same squad as Council and Bona is a threat to the balance of the dawg-in-him time space equilibrium.
He finished the three-game stretch in Utah with the most total rebounds of anyone on the team (18). Even more impressive, nine of those were offensive rebounds that he snared. Despite only standing 6-foot-4 in shoes, Jones is an expert at relocating and finding the ball after a shot goes up, and his arms are just long enough (6-foot-7 wingspan) that he can outreach opponents in 50-50 situations.
More important than anything else, Jones is strong and he wants the ball. Just watch this play where he wins a loose ball vs Walker Kessler — a 7-foot-1, 245-pound man — by simply tossing the Jazz center to the floor.
Of course, Jones is very limited. He’s already 22 years old and shot just 8-for-22 from the field in Utah, and his passing, though looking improved compared to how it was at Memphis, is still not a huge positive in his game. The most likely outcome is that he bounces around the NBA on two-way contracts for a multitude of teams during the next few years.
But if the Sixers keep him around for a while, I’m all for it. This is a guy who will sub in during a random January game where half the usual rotation is injured and finish with eight rebounds in six minutes. Count me in.
Keve Aluma
Aluma averaged 11 points per game this past week, the third-best mark of anyone on the team, and looked like a perfectly acceptable break-glass-in-case-of-emergency option at center.
He played for Virginia Tech a few years back, and saw minutes in the Korean Basketball League this past season. A 25-year-old, 6-foot-9 center is usually not the main draw of Summer League, but Aluma drove and finished well, shot an incredibly respectable 3-for-7 from three, and never once looked like he was lost out on the floor. If the Sixers can somehow bring him down to Delaware for the next season, he’s definitely a guy worth keeping around.
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.
Spot on. Get thee to Vegas.