5 Things From the Sixers’ 139-84 Rout of the New Zealand Breakers
Bonus points to anyone who remembered that New Zealand’s coach was a former Sixers’ draft pick.
You’re a much healthier person than me if you stopped watching this game by halftime.
It was a preseason game against a non-NBA opponent, not to mention both Joel Embiid and Paul George were watching from the sidelines in street clothes. The Sixers were up 30 almost instantly and basically messed around for the last ¾ of the game. It wasn’t a meaningful basketball game.
Still, I watched all 48 minutes of and found five important takeaways that Sixers fans need to know with regular season basketball jarringly close to actually returning:
1. Jared McCain Shot Very Well, But the Athleticism Concerns Are Still Real
If you just look at the final box score, it very much appears that McCain (Or J-Mac, as Matt Cord is now set on calling him) had a solid debut game. Though a 5-for-14 shooting performance isn’t quite ideal, it’ll more than suffice when it includes a 4-for-9 mark from the three-point line to go along with seven rebounds and a robust +36 in 28 minutes of action.
After a five-game stint in Vegas that saw McCain struggle to knock down threes, the rookie looked very comfortable shooting during his first taste of semi-legit NBA action.
“It’s something as a smaller guard that you have to be able to do,” McCain said postgame of his no-dip threes, which have already reminded so many of Nico Batum. “You have to have a quick release with everybody being so tall in this league. But it’s something I’ve been working on for a while now, and it’s nice to see that it’s shown.”
But as great as his perimeter shotmaking was, the rookie had his share of lowlights. McCain often struggled to keep the speedy Parker Jackson-Cartwright in front of him on defense during the second quarter, and he had two noteworthy misses inside where he failed to separate from his own defenders in a meaningful way.
McCain split the trap with a push dribble while running a double drag action on the first clip, only to take off too early inside and get easily swatted at the rim. Then in the second, he curled off a level screen out top and tried to finish with his inside hand on the left side. However, he moved far too slowly to create any distance between himself and his man, and the result was an awkward flip at the rim that missed easily.
The good news is that McCain likely will be more of a pure off-ball sniper in any minutes he shares the floor with the Sixers’ best players this season. If his job is solely to hit open catch-and-shoots when the ball gets swung to him amidst a scrambling defense, I’m confident he can do it, and do it well. But anyone worried about his size and speed long term also saw those fears validated last night. Those are shortcomings that McCain is going to have to work to overcome throughout his entire NBA career.
2. Tyrese Maxey Lol
Not much insight to provide on this one, just wanted to highlight for the quadrillionth time how amazing it is that Tyrese Maxey fell all the way to the Sixers at Pick No. 21 in the draft four years ago. Just look at how effortless the game looks for him at all times:
It’s very funny remembering how the biggest concern on Maxey coming out of Kentucky was his three-point shot. He might’ve dipped to below 40% from behind the line last season, but the tape doesn’t lie — Maxey is one of the most dangerous off-the-dribble scorers in the entire world. Year five with him should be an absolute blast.
3. Kyle Lowry Is Still the Best Passer on this Team
Guerschon Yabusele was understandably the talk of town following his 6-for-6 shooting debut in Philly. The Dancing Bear certainly played well, but what stood out more to me was how he benefited from the pristine passing of the 38 year-old Kyle Lowry.
Maxey and Embiid are the two best playmakers on the Sixers simply due to their immense scoring gravity and the way they bend opposing defenses to their will. But in terms of pure passing acumen, there isn’t a single Sixers player who comes anywhere close to Lowry.
“[Kyle] is a great passer. He understands things a lot more than the rest of the other guys,” Yabusele said when asked about his early pick and roll chemistry with Lowry. “After that first pass, he was telling me to always roll. He was gonna find me.”
I really can’t stress enough how much fun Lowry is for a basketball schematics nerd such as myself. The first assist to Yabu where he runs a Spain action and immediately dissects the defense’s breakdown with an overhead bullet pass through traffic is perfect. His pocket pass to KJ Martin on the slot pick and roll was leading KJ straight to the rim before he had even opened up from his screen. The transition outlet to Kelly Oubre Jr. couldn’t have been thrown better, as Lowry tossed it without hesitation and with unbelievable accuracy to his K9 in stride.
Of all the acclaimed moves Daryl Morey and Co. made this offseason, one that should never be overlooked is bringing back Lowry for a second go-around after picking him on the buy-out market last February. No one has ever needed to be a Sixer more than him.
4. “The Ricky Council”
It’s hard to think of a more ideal environment for Ricky Council IV than the setting on the floor last night. The second-year scorer out of Arkansas is a totally different echelon of athlete than anyone New Zealand could throw out there, and the end result was Council scoring 13 points on a perfect 5-for-5 shooting performance.
Most notably, C4 made use of his signature driving and foul drawing move, an up-and-over gather that I suggest we all call “The Ricky Council” moving forward.
The basic idea of “The Ricky Council” is to put the ball above your head as you bring it across your body for the right-to-left finish. Council favors for it for many reasons, as he 1) does not like to finish with his left hand, and this allows him to use his right on that side of the basket, 2) can swing his arms through the lane and bait defenders into committing shooting fouls, and 3) allows him to tap into his absurd strength and mid-air body control, his two best athletic traits. He draws contact for the shooting foul from his defender as he swings the ball through, then with his impressive bulk, can absorb all the contact before hanging and finishing off the glass with grace.
Whenever Council is driving downhill and feels he has space to attack, he’s going to the up-and-over gather. It worked during his limited regular season action as a rookie, and in a preseason matchup against an NBL foe, it might as well have been the Kareem skyhook. It’s his security blanket in terms of finishing moves, and a pretty good one at that.
5. Kelly Oubre Jr., the Point Guard Stopper
This one is more just a confirmation of what we already presumed to be the case — the Sixers are going to use Kelly Oubre as the defender of opposing teams’ point guards this season.
New Zealand’s Parker Jackson-Cartwright is generously listed at 5-foot-10, theoretically making him a good defensive matchup for Maxey. Yet when the Sixers began Monday’s game, it was the Tsunami Papi himself who was tracking the Breakers’ diminutive initiator up and down the court. Though Nurse didn’t confirm as much in the postgame presser, it’s likely the case that he wanted his team to get used to what their typical assignments will be on that end of the floor. Oubre using his length to smother primary ball handlers, while Maxey guards up against the shooting guards of the association.
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.
Enjoy the quick-point write-up. And, I apologize in advance for a long-ish comment. I do think you, and the Greater Ricky Universe, have been a bit unfair to McCain since Summer League.
Generally, the concerns you (and Spike and Mike) have are valid, especially when it comes to his likelihood of contributing meaningfully this season. He is smaller-ish with a poor wingspan and below average athleticism. However, I think from a scouting standpoint of his "pro" games thus far, too often good signs are overlooked in favor of negative outcomes. Outcomes, we might expect from a young guard or player regardless our priors based on his physical profile.
For example, his finishing at the rim. It has been poor, no doubt. But people are too quick to assume that is insurmountable due to his physical limitations. That might be true! But it ignores that young guards, as a category, are often bad finishers; regardless their size and shape. I haven't looked at the data on this recently, but it certainly used to be the case that being being a bad finisher as a young guard was actually not that predictive of future ability in that area.
On the other hand, I have been impressed with his ability to get to valuable spots on the floor and deep into the paint regularly despite the aforementioned limitations. And, going a step further, I think that ability, is more positively predictive. Guys who can't get to valuable spots on the court don't improve that as often as guys improve as finishers (especially guys with good touch).
On defense last night, he absolutely gave up a ton of buckets to Parker Jackson-Cartwright. But I honestly think two pieces of context matter.
First, PJC is a waterbug and a lot of that time was played with zero rim protection on the court for the Sixers. A guy with his quickness is going to get space on plenty of NBA-level defenders better than McCain. The mitigation is that he can't finish at the rim...unless your center is Guerschon Yabusele.
Second, a lot of those PJC buckets came on tough midrange step backs. Yes, a good NBA player *can* hit those. But in the grander scheme of things, that's a shot you are ok with giving up. I have vivid memories of Ish Smith revenge games looks a lot like that against actual Sixers defenders too. It sucks, but you choose to lose that way over alternatives 11 times out of 10.
On the positive side, I was pleasantly surprised by McCain's pick navigation last night. Not always amazing or anything. But it was often not awful.
It's probably true that McCain will always have struggles on defense. And it *might* be true he will never be able finish close to the basket well enough to matter. But I think the negative side of those things are too often assumed due to priors based largely on his anthropometry in ways that isn't always as predictive as it seems.
Sorry to spam the comments section of this post but I had another thought about McCain and a possible reason for people (maybe) misevaluating him and his potential. This would maybe have some crossover into The Draft Council but I couldn’t find an email for that pod specifically so here it is:
I think people vastly underestimate the value of strength to basketball players; specifically non-bigs/“power players”. And so, people say “maybe McCain is Seth Curry but strong” as a throwaway and semi-pejorative, not realizing “Seth Curry but strong” is VASTLY better than Actual Seth Curry.
It seems like it’s saying “there are many traits in basketball, so taking Seth Curry and adding one more doesn’t do that much”. But what it’s actually saying is “What if Seth Curry could hold up on defense, and rebound better, and finish better, and drive better because we can hold off defenders..etc. etc.”
I may be over-proving my point, but this made me think of the following exercise: take very good/elite NBA guards and remove strength as a positive trait and scout them. Weak James Harden is just not a super star. Weak Kyle Lowry and Weak Jalen Brunson are very possibly just never NBA players at all.
All that said, maybe McCain isn’t going to be that good. I’m certainly not directly comparing him to the players mentioned in the last paragraph. Just reacting to the way I heard people talk about him with an additional “scouting” thought I’ve had bouncing around in my head for a bit.