For as much heat as Daryl Morey \u2014 and to some extent ownership \u2014 took for trading Jared McCain at last season\u2019s deadline, let\u2019s not forget that Nick Nurse played at least somewhat of a role in the departure of the team\u2019s 2024 first-round pick. Nurse was quoted as saying McCain had gone through a \u201ctough couple years\u201d back in February when McCain was shipped out to Oklahoma City.<\/p>\n
Obviously, Nurse was hinting at the meniscus injury that cut McCain\u2019s rookie year short and the UCL tear in his thumb ahead of training camp. However, McCain was never really fully integrated into Philadelphia\u2019s rotation upon his return from the injury in 2025-26 and was traded before the season even ended. So it stands to reason that Nurse was lukewarm at best on the idea of McCain playing anywhere from 25-35 minutes a night and the writing was on the wall for McCain\u2019s exit out of town.<\/p>\n
The primary draft pick Philadelphia received in the trade with Oklahoma City has now been turned into Labaron Philon Jr., a guard who\u2019s only one inch taller than McCain. When Josh Harris and Bob Myers held a press conference announcing Morey\u2019s dismissal, the McCain trade was at the center of a frequent line of questioning from the local media. Nurse was retained at the end of the season and so clearly the Sixers\u2019 brain trust had to be on the same page with incoming president Mike Gansey on how to deploy their guards moving forward.<\/p>\n
While Philon isn\u2019t any taller than VJ Edgecombe, and is only slightly taller than Tyrese Maxey, there has to be a plan on how to avoid a McCain 2.0 situation. But just because Philon is similar in height to McCain and the other guards that will play prominently in the Sixers\u2019 rotation in 2026-27, doesn\u2019t mean this is going to play out the same way McCain\u2019s tenure as a Sixer did.<\/p>\n
Philon has done what most teams want their first-round picks to do in Summer League. He\u2019s gotten a lot of minutes, put up a lot of shots and flashed the skills that made him worthy of a selection in the first round. Understandably so, the Sixers have been playing through Philon when he\u2019s been on the court. What\u2019s been recognizable is the versatility in how Philon has been scoring.<\/p>\n
Unlike McCain, Philon seems comfortable being able to score at all three levels, with the obvious caveat that he\u2019s doing so in Summer League games. Nevertheless, he\u2019s getting to the basket and finishing around the rim. He\u2019s scoring off the dribble in the midrange area and he looks comfortable from the three-point line when he lets it fly from deep. Additionally, Philon is a much better passer entering the NBA than McCain was at this time two years ago and McCain\u2019s passing skills haven\u2019t improved much since he got drafted.<\/p>\n
The bottom line here is that Philon seems like a player that\u2019s good at a lot of different things while McCain was someone who was elite at shooting and had work to do in other areas if he was going to become a more well-rounded guard. That doesn\u2019t mean that Philon is destined to have the better NBA career, but it does suggest that Philon would seem to be a better fit with Maxey and Edgecombe than McCain was.<\/p>\n
If you already have two smaller guards in Maxey and Edgecombe anchoring your backcourt, how much sense does it make to play a third small guard that doesn\u2019t handle the ball or pass well with those two? If McCain was three or four inches taller and a knockdown shooter as a small forward, he might have fit more naturally with Maxey and Edgecombe.<\/p>\n
Philon\u2019s ability to run the offense if needed should give Nurse more options. You would think just about everyone in the organization would sign up for Maxey\u2019s minutes to be reduced a bit in the regular season. Well, Philon could allow Maxey to rest a little more during certain games, but he could also more naturally be the team\u2019s primary ball handler leaving Maxey to play off the ball and perhaps not tire out as quickly.<\/p>\n
Additionally, if the Sixers just want to play faster this year, Philon\u2019s a niftier guard that would have more success in transition than McCain would. In an era of positionless basketball, having three good athletes in Philon, Maxey and Edgecombe all on the floor at the same time should allow the Sixers to get out and run off missed field goals from the opponent pretty routinely.<\/p>\n
None of this is meant to validate trading away McCain or imply that Philon is certain to be the better NBA player. There\u2019s certainly a world in which this works out for everyone and the Sixers\u2019 vision of a backcourt with all three of their current guards makes more sense and McCain settles into a long career with a winning franchise like the Thunder.<\/p>\n
We should note that McCain only started two games for the Thunder in the postseason which might indicate that on a contending team, McCain might never be more than a shooter that comes off the bench. In other words, McCain\u2019s one elite skill might be enough for him to have a long NBA career by itself. But Philon\u2019s wider array of skills might give him a higher ceiling and certainly fits better with the current version of the Philadelphia 76ers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For as much heat as Daryl Morey \u2014 and to some extent ownership \u2014 took for trading Jared…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":784451,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3769],"tags":[679,7,6,678,207,3817,5902],"class_list":["post-789115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia-76ers","tag-76ers","tag-basketball","tag-nba","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-76ers","tag-philadelphia76ers","tag-sixers-analysis"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116936615132633426","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/784451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}