Jared McCain leads Sixers to wild overtime win vs. Hornets

Jared McCain scored a team-high 27 points and dragged the Sixers over the line against the Hornets, pushing Philadelphia to a much-needed 107-105 overtime victory.

Here’s what I saw.

The Good

— I thought Jared McCain was going to have a long road ahead of him to play minutes for this team after watching him at Summer League. But after a lot of buzz in training camp and plenty of reassurances from scouts that he would perk up, McCain has already found an early groove off of the bench. He’s ready to play now and not just a couple of months from now.

One of the most important sequences of the game came late in the third quarter, with the Sixers nursing a small-ish lead and the Hornets within striking distance heading into the fourth. McCain tried to clear some space for Philadelphia all on his own, hitting a gorgeous scoop layup in traffic on one possession before leading a runout on the next, pulling up in space for one of his patented transition threes. Suddenly, the lead was back to 10 points, and there was a bit less panic lingering in the air.

As the Sixers did their best to totally collapse in the fourth quarter (more on that in a moment), McCain was one of the only guys who showed a modicum of composure, saving them from a regulation loss. He hit a big run-stopper around the five-minute mark as it looked like the game was getting away from them, and as they rode the seesaw with Charlotte in the final minutes, the offense kept defaulting to McCain. He rewarded the confidence of his more experienced teammates with tough makes from midrange and a monster three from the left corner that drew the loudest cheer of the night.

With no clear perimeter leader in overtime thanks to Paul George’s minute restriction, it was left to McCain to continue leading a group of older men. He picked a good time to have his best finishing night of the year at the rim, using his strength to shield defenders from the ball and score at the basket:

McCain, of course, has stayed on the floor because he has done more than just score. He continues to be a feisty rebounder and pulled a loose ball off of the floor in the fourth with a dive into a thicket of bodies, emerging with possession despite being the smallest guy on the floor. I think McCain’s intangibles pop every time he’s on the floor, and Nurse smartly rewarded him with a closer role. Hell of a night for the rookie, and he has certainly earned a steady role for at least the short term.

— The Guerschon Yabusele bandwagon is growing larger by the day, and I am not sure there will be any spots remaining by the end of the month. Now is the time to hop on board, because he was been one of the best stories of the season so far for Philadelphia.

Yabusele was off to a solid if unspectacular start in the first half, with six points on a pair of layups and a trip to the free-throw line. But as usual, the little things added up to a winning margin for the Sixers. So Nick Nurse made one of the first genuinely surprising moves of the season, bumping Yabusele to the starting five in the second half in place of Andre Drummond.

The move worked to perfection, in part because Yabusele was the star of the show for Philadelphia in the first seven minutes of the third quarter. He was a menace for an undersized Hornets team on the interior, scoring on several different post moves around the baseline while sprinkling in a basket or two as a roller. And once the Hornets began loading up in the paint, Yabusele stepped out for some pick-and-pop looks, and while he may come back to Earth as a shooter eventually, he is punishing teams for leaving him open at the moment. That’s going to make it to the opposing scouting report sooner rather than later.

He didn’t exactly need to do much more than that, but Yabusele was also hugely helpful on the defensive end, making good pre-reads and showing his hands without fouling on the perimeter. He has put in a lot of work to improve from his days in Boston when he lacked the foot speed and the know-how to consistently stay in front of perimeter guys. That alone creates a point of separation between Yabusele and Drummond.

Last season, Nick Nurse started Mo Bamba in a fair amount of games under the guise of keeping Paul Reed in his defined role off of the bench. It may be past time to do the same for Drummond, who responded to his benching in the second half with good energy in a reserve shift. Yabusele is just wildly outplaying him at the moment and deserves to be on the floor as often as they can put him out there.

— As bad as Philadelphia’s offense has been most of the year, there have been moments where you’ve at least been reminded that this could be a special defensive team when they are all healthy. As they tried to slog through a game where they couldn’t hit water from a boat, the Sixers’ defensive activity remained ultra-high. The three wings between Embiid and Maxey appear capable of total disruption when they finally get in sync on that mythical date in the future.

The Hornets’ offense is driven primarily by LaMelo Ball, and though he had his moments in Sunday night’s game, Philadelphia generally hounded him into tight spots and forced the ball out of his hands. Even when Ball managed to get a favorable matchup against a smaller defender, there was always help lurking from an angle Ball wasn’t expecting it to come from. George and Martin were particularly destructive as help defenders, coming up with six steals between the two of them.

When they get Embiid back, assuming he can move at an adequate level and protect the rim as he always has, they might really start cooking.

— Congratulations to Jeff Dowtin for proving the Sixers can bring a point guard off of the bench and expect him to be able to create a shot for himself. That officially puts him in a class by himself.

After seeing what Reggie Jackson had to offer on the West Coast trip, Nurse decided it was time to dust off the younger guard, and it immediately paid dividends. Dowtin scored nine first-half points on a nice variety of shots — a catch-and-shoot three, a midrange pull-up, a nice runner off of the glass — and managed to look pretty good after not playing real basketball in weeks.

The downside is he didn’t do much of anything to create for others, but beggars can’t be choosers.

— Kyle Lowry didn’t do much, but he somehow poked away the most important offensive rebound of the game on Yabusele’s missed free throw at the end of overtime. Can’t teach tough, or something.

The Bad

— We are officially outside of the grace period for Paul George, who has no good excuse to shoot as poorly as he did against the Hornets. He was able to sustain the offense with some beautiful-looking rainbow jumpers from the mid-post in the first half, but George is shooting tour dates from deep at the moment, and the quality of the shot has not really mattered at all.

It does feel very Sixers that the other parts of PG’s game have been better than advertised with his signature skill going completely missing to open his career. He has been a productive playmaker for others, a disruptive help defender off-ball, a helper on the glass, and one of the better weakside rim protectors on the team. But with so much of the offense running through him, they just cannot afford for him to clang jumper after jumper off of the back iron, bleeding the shot clock down to take a contested pull-up three.

Because George is in his mid-30s, I can already anticipate some debates about whether he “can’t” get past players or simply “doesn’t want to” and settles for contested pull-up jumpers as a default choice. To me, the distinction isn’t all that important, because the shot diet is the same (bad) either way no matter what the reason is. If they are living and dying on George as a primary initiator, they are probably spinning their wheels in the mud regardless. End of the day, the percentages will climb when George has more of his shots coming from catch-and-shoot jumpers with Joel Embiid manning the pivot. But there have been better starts to careers in Philadelphia.

— A separate bullet point for this: Nick Nurse didn’t draw up anything especially creative for the final play of regulation, but he got George isolated on the wing with a chance to win the game. The job was mostly done, you need your star to do something more than just stand there for eight seconds.

— The Sixers have been a group of bricklayers all year so far, but they tested the limits of watchability with Sunday night’s shooting effort. Philadelphia entered halftime 1/14 from deep, a blistering 7% from beyond the arc. That feels impossible for a professional basketball team, and yet!

This was in spite of the fact that Nurse is trying as hard as he can to get shooting on the floor. He used Eric Gordon and Jared McCain as reserves, went to Dowtin as the backup guard, and continues to play Yabusele at the five in part because it helps with their spacing. And some of their good shooters even got quality looks against Charlotte, promptly missing them all.

Thank god they took the lid off of the rim in the second half, I’m not sure anybody could have sat through another 24 minutes of bricks. Even still, they dug out of such a ridiculous hole that their team number was still ugly for the night.

— At the risk of turning every game into a referendum on Andre Drummond, it really is incredible that they lose his minutes every single game no matter what he does. Sunday’s first half actually featured some good attacking work from Drummond in the post, with Charlotte playing ultra-small at almost all times. And despite his nine points and five rebounds, the Sixers lost those first-half minutes by 10 points. The Sixers won Yabusele’s minutes by 11 points. At a certain point, it’s just impossible to ignore how pronounced the gap is.

This version of the Hornets feels tailormade for Drummond to dominate on the glass and in the paint, and that didn’t happen aside from some positive flashes here and there. Grant Williams is giving up considerable size to Drummond, but he had a sequence where he stonewalled the Sixers’ starting center in the paint and then knocked down a three on a late Drummond closeout on the other end.

They simply can’t win his minutes right now. I have to imagine Nurse is considering benching him entirely when Embiid comes back, but too early to say.

— Jared McCain should play every minute the Sixers think about playing Eric Gordon for right now. I don’t think we need to dive a lot deeper than that.

The Ugly

— Paul George sitting all of overtime because of a minute restriction is absolutely brutal stuff. I find it hard to believe the medical staff thinks they couldn’t get him on the floor for even a minute or two of the extra period.

— I respect Nurse giving McCain opportunities, of course, but having Lowry and McCain on the floor together out of a timeout on an endgame defensive possession is just bonkers. Terrible situational basketball. There have been problems out of his control to open the year, but making substitutions based on time and situation isn’t one of them.

— There was a stoppage in the first quarter that required the entire clean-up crew to hit the floor with towels by the Sixers’ bench. Evidently, Kelly Oubre was so upset about his play that he decided it was a good idea to spike his water on his way from the floor to the bench.

Not his brightest moment as a Sixers player.

— A 16-15 basketball quarter? In this economy? At least the Sixers were on the winning end of it, I guess.