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.
Yeah to be clear I still liked the McCain pick and I think he's good. Only player I might've taken him over him there is Isaiah Collier, who it seems I was way higher on than the NBA as a whole was.
McCain is very aware of his physical limitations on an NBA floor and plays in a way to minimize those, and when he gets to play off Maxey, PG, Embiid, etc in real minutes, he'll prob look great as a floor spacer and connector. He'll also prob guard up vs stronger, slower bodies, which will be better for him. Just wanted to point out that we did see some of his weaknesses last night in what was otherwise a good game for him.
I liked Collier too but about on par with McCain. I really hoped one of Holland, Carter, or Bub would fall to us. (That seemed less insane the days before the draft that it looks now).
Fun side story about Collier: I live in Philly and the weekend after the draft I had an Uber driver who was at the draft as a personal friend of Collier and his family. Saw photos and everything.
And yeah, I also didn't mean to ascribe to you negativity on McCain from a recent Ricky pod too but that kinda came through. I am just bugged by the only positive being mentioned is as a shooter and then all the negative skewing toward results over "tape".
Another thing I left out in my long ramble is his passing. He made multiple passes in summer league that I'm not sure anyone on the current Sixers can make (maybe Lowry). Surely, that says something about the Sixers lack of passers...but still! Heard WAY more about how he's slow than that lol.
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.
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.
Yeah to be clear I still liked the McCain pick and I think he's good. Only player I might've taken him over him there is Isaiah Collier, who it seems I was way higher on than the NBA as a whole was.
McCain is very aware of his physical limitations on an NBA floor and plays in a way to minimize those, and when he gets to play off Maxey, PG, Embiid, etc in real minutes, he'll prob look great as a floor spacer and connector. He'll also prob guard up vs stronger, slower bodies, which will be better for him. Just wanted to point out that we did see some of his weaknesses last night in what was otherwise a good game for him.
Thanks for the response!
I liked Collier too but about on par with McCain. I really hoped one of Holland, Carter, or Bub would fall to us. (That seemed less insane the days before the draft that it looks now).
Fun side story about Collier: I live in Philly and the weekend after the draft I had an Uber driver who was at the draft as a personal friend of Collier and his family. Saw photos and everything.
And yeah, I also didn't mean to ascribe to you negativity on McCain from a recent Ricky pod too but that kinda came through. I am just bugged by the only positive being mentioned is as a shooter and then all the negative skewing toward results over "tape".
Another thing I left out in my long ramble is his passing. He made multiple passes in summer league that I'm not sure anyone on the current Sixers can make (maybe Lowry). Surely, that says something about the Sixers lack of passers...but still! Heard WAY more about how he's slow than that lol.
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.