Jared McCain drops 34 in hard-fought Sixers loss to Cavs

Jared McCain put his name on the NBA map with an electric 34-point, 10-assist outing against the undefeated Cavs, but the shorthanded Sixers ran out of gas in a 114-106 loss.

Here’s what I saw.

The Good

— If the brakes were still functional on the Jared McCain hype train before this game began, you can forget about using them after this one. We are past the point of worrying about him heading for a stint in the G-League, past the point of asking whether he should play at all, past the point of suggesting he needs to surpass some of their older vets in the rotation. Now the question becomes — should Jared McCain get a chance to start in the immediate future?

Frankly, that feels like an easy yes, even if it’s only for a game or two. He is on a heater over the last week or so, but when the shots stop falling and he goes through a cold spell, it appears there’s enough other stuff there to justify his place on the floor.

McCain feels like one of the most trustworthy decisionmakers on the roster already, with a great understanding of who he is and a good instinct for when to simply make the easy pass and move into a better spot. Rather than playing off of high-volume stars, though, McCain got to control the offense for long stretches of the Cavs game. And in a bigger role, he hardly put a foot wrong, dipping through traffic and sprinting around the perimeter to try to get the Sixers the best looks possible. He did a great job of that in any context, helping the Sixers unload a ton of threes on an undefeated Cavs team.

The shot is the thing with the potential to make him special, of course. McCain has so many different jumpers in the arsenal already — he’s a confident movement shooter, he loves the transition pull-up, and catch-and-shoot threes look effortless coming out of his hands. He was the game’s leading scorer at halftime with 16 big ones, and the beauty of his game is he doesn’t have to dominate the ball in order to put points on the board in a hurry.

There will of course be growing pains, which we witnessed in real time in the second half. McCain was part of three early-quarter turnovers in the third, throwing a couple away and dropping a dribble handoff shortly afterward. But like we’ve seen throughout this stretch, McCain battled through the adversity and eventually found a mini-groove midway through the period, setting up an exciting finish in the fourth.

And it was basically all McCain for Philadelphia down the stretch, with the rookie showing off the full arsenal in the final quarter. Cleveland threw a variety of stuff at the rookie to try to slow him down, and he poked and prodded enough to render it useless. When they overplayed the three, he got to the middie. When they lost him on the perimeter, the threes were going up. And when they blitzed him a time or two, he made the quick pass to Yabusele on the roll, allowing his big man to make a pass on the short roll for an open three.

It was almost a carbon copy of Maxey’s game with the COVID-stricken roster from No. 0’s rookie year, with this rookie almost doing enough to drag them to a win. Incredible performance, and one that will beg questions about just how large of a role he can play right now, let alone months from now.

— The only way the Sixers were going to have a reasonable chance to hang around in this game was by attempting to out-math the Cavaliers. Jack up as many threes as you can, hope the percentages go your way, and then hang on for dear life. To their credit, though, their shot quality was pretty damn good in the first half as they got up 26 threes in 24 minutes, playing a ton of five-out offense and swinging the ball around the perimeter.

It would have been nice to get good shooting performances from Kelly Oubre and Caleb Martin almost any other game this year, but at least they brought their shooting boots for a game. Oubre was more deadly from downtown, while Martin got to work from midrange, hitting some shots that may have been more lucky than good (in this case, nobody really cares). Even if it had meant little to the final outcome, you would hope a good shooting night for these guys gets them moving in the right direction. They’re an essential piece of the Sixers’ defensive identity, so if they can just hit a reasonable amount of their threes, the Sixers won’t be left with so many tough lineup decisions.

(Yes, I realize this is a section about threes and I am celebrating midrange makes for a player, but you have to take wins where you can get them.)

Once Martin goes on a week or two run where he hits shots, I think (or perhaps hope) that people will begin to appreciate what he’s bringing on the defensive side of the ball. He is working his ass off across

Joining the wings in the unexpected success department was Reggie Jackson, hit a pair of threes in the first half and made up for some ghastly minutes during last week’s West Coast trip. There’s still a bit too much of the “It’s Reggie Jackson time!” thing happening when he’s on the floor, but that’s more aggravating on a night when they have plentiful options.

The Sixers’ three-point volume slowed in the second half, naturally, but that was mostly a function of the Cavs figuring out that McCain could shoot and attempting to run him off of the line.

The Bad

— I don’t know man, this group hung around against an undefeated team for the entire night, how much complaining did you expect me to do? On second thought, don’t answer that.

— Did you guys enjoy the period of the season that featured Kyle Lowry making jump shots? That was a fun two weeks.

— KJ Martin may have spent a lot of time working on his jumper in the offseason, but they have not seen any results from it yet.

— Welcome back to bench hell, Jeff Dowtin.

The Ugly

— Ricky Council IV has been mostly out of the rotation to start the year, and though he has had a fair amount of believers after a fun rookie year, he was completely lost in his brief appearance on Wednesday. Feels like he’s in a pretty tough hole to climb out of at the moment, with a rookie breaking into the rotation and older vets ahead of him in the wing pecking order. We’ll see if he can fight his way out of this.

— Hard to ding a guy who was sick and couldn’t play for results on the floor, but their success against a big frontcourt with a small frontline doesn’t exactly add to the use case for Andre Drummond. The Sixers were basically in a dead heat with the Cavs in the offensive rebounding battle all night!

There were certainly some moments where you would have liked to have a bit more size at the rim, and the limitations of the Yabusele/Bona combo at the five were on display. But you could at least see the upside cases for those two in flashes — Bona had some acrobatic contests around the rim on defense, and Yabusele added a blend of rebounding and playmaking on a night they were in desperate need of secondary help.