Jared McCain, ‘blindsided’ by 76ers trade, thriving with Thunder: ‘They allow me to be myself’

NEW YORK — In the visitors’ locker room at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday, Oklahoma City Thunder forward Jalen Williams called attention to the massive smile on Jared McCain’s face.

“He’s so happy,” Williams said.

Williams addressed McCain directly: “What are you so happy about?”

“We won!” McCain said.

Oklahoma City had just eked out a 103-100 victory against the New York Knicks, improving to a league-best 49-15. It had also improved to 9-3 since acquiring McCain from the Philadelphia 76ers, despite Shai Gilgeous-Alexander missing nine of those games and Williams missing 10.

“Oh, you played in Philly, you’re not used to that shit,” Williams said.

“What do you mean?” McCain responded. “They’re like sixth in the East.”

The truth is that McCain is as cheerful a character as you’ll find in the NBA. Regardless of the situation he’s in, he tries to “turn it into a positive,” he told me. And in his first month with the Thunder, the reigning NBA champions, there was a lot to smile about.

McCain has played 12 games for his new team, and he has scored at least 20 points in three of them. The 6-foot-3 guard has averaged 11.9 points in 19.2 minutes per game on 47/41/90 shooting splits, flying off screens and knocking down midrange jumpers and 3s with the same pep in his step that he had before his knee injury last season, at which point he was the frontrunner for Rookie of the Year.

To be clear, McCain never wanted to leave the Sixers. He was “completely blindsided” by the trade, he said. He is “really grateful,” though, to have landed with Oklahoma City for a number of reasons.

McCain loves the way that the Thunder play. “This offense is amazing,” he said, praising the team’s collective chemistry and unselfishness. He loves playing off Isaiah Hartenstein, the big man Gilgeous-Alexander described as a “dream” to play with after just two regular-season games last season.

“It’s being able to find where I want the ball but also find my man after he passes the ball, when he drops the passes,” McCain said. “Or being able to just pitch it and then come off. Just that little bit of space is all a shooter needs to get something off. And if I got a little bit of an advantage, I know I can either get to the bump mid or get to a 3.”

He loves the way that coach Mark Daigneault thinks. Anyone who has been around the team has heard Daigneault talk about being present, having a 0-0 mindset and resilience being a muscle you can build. McCain is a devoted re-reader of “The Inner Game of Tennis” — when I mentioned the book, he showed me the copy he had in his bag — and has practiced meditation and visualization since he was in high school. 

“When you can mesh like that with a coach, it’s really awesome,” McCain said, recalling his first meeting with Daigneault and general manager Sam Presti before the 2024 draft.

“Being able to just talk to them about, ‘How is Shai so good?’ It was process-oriented, the daily habits,” McCain said. “It’s the consistency, the discipline. That’s all stuff that I love. I love that ‘Atomic Habits,’ the ‘1% Better,’ the do one thing, get really good at it, then focus on the next thing. It’s been really cool to just have conversations with them, get to know ’em, because it’s the same mindset I have.”

Early in McCain’s sixth game with the Thunder, he ran a throw-and-go with Hartenstein, drove baseline, kicked the ball out to Cason Wallace and then relocated for an open 3. If one possession demonstrates his promise, it’s this one. He is a threat with the ball in his hands and can be an even bigger threat when he gets rid of the ball.

For all of the people who started launching deep 3s because of Stephen Curry, few NBA players have tried to blend off-the-dribble shooting with off-ball movement the way he does. McCain said that, because he idolized and studied Curry — and because he played next to elite ballhandlers at Centennial High School and Duke — he has always tried to get involved in the game through movement, rather than “just standing in the corner waiting for something to happen.” He knew, coming into the NBA, that this would make him stand out. He also knew that, as a defender, your instinct is to relax when the guy you’re guarding makes a pass.

“You stop and you look at the ball,” McCain said. “You’re taught that. It’s basically once your guy gets in the paint and he passes the ball out, you can kind of be in help. But once you’re able to just get back out quick and take those backpedal shots or get-out-quick shots, those are the ones that are some of my favorites.”

With not only Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams but guard Ajay Mitchell sidelined when he arrived, McCain has given OKC a timely spark. Daigneault said that McCain has played his game with confidence while having respect for the Thunder’s continuity and what they’ve accomplished.

“That’s a very fine needle to thread,” Daigneault said. “The last guys that did that well were Hartenstein and Alex [Caruso], but they did it in the preseason with a build-up. And they’re veteran players. It’s a huge testament to him. He’s found that balance right off the bat. He’s earned a lot of respect from everybody because of that.”

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Daigneault also said, though, that it would have been fine if McCain had gotten off to a rough start. “You don’t know, when you trade for a guy, how they’re going to integrate,” he said. For the Thunder, this has been a process of “discovery” — they’re not trying to fit him into a specific role, but letting his role emerge naturally.

“We’re just kind of like throwing him out there,” Daigneault said, “and telling him to play inside the team and telling him kind of the non-negotiable things, the fundamental things that everybody has to do. And then give him a level of breathing room around that to figure out how to play, have his teammates figure out how he can play with them.”

As challenging as it is to drop everything, move to a different city and try to adapt to a new team in the middle of a season, there can be something psychologically freeing about being traded. For McCain, there has been a lot to learn, but there has been no expectation that he would pick it all up immediately. This environment, so far, has been ideal.

“They allow me to be myself,” McCain said. 

Before the trade, McCain did not always feel or look like himself on the court this season. Coming off a torn UCL in his right thumb and a torn lateral meniscus in his left knee, he tried to shake off almost a year’s worth of rust on a team that was winning games and had a much more crowded backcourt than it did before he got hurt. 

On the first anniversary of his 34-point game as a rookie, he shot 3 for 10 in his first G League game. There were some encouraging moments — he caught fire in a back-to-back against Charlotte and Milwaukee in late January — but, in 37 games for the Sixers, he averaged just 6.6 points on 50.6% true shooting.   

“I have nothing bad to say about none of the teammates, none of the coaches, but it’s just hard to find a rhythm playing with really great players and getting little short spurts,” McCain said. “There were a few games, for sure, that I felt great. I feel like those were the ones where I got to play a little extended minutes, play through some mistakes.”

McCain said it’s “nobody’s fault” that he didn’t consistently find his form in Philly. “I knew it was going to take time,” he said. “It’s even still taking time. I feel great right now, but sometimes, you know, some days are better than others.”

With Tyrese Maxey playing at an All-NBA level and rookie VJ Edgecombe looking like a star in the making, McCain “wasn’t thinking about a trade at all,” he said. He was confident that his opportunities would come and that he could grow alongside them.

“I definitely thought it could work,” McCain said. “Long-term, I definitely think it could work. I loved playing with them. It was really fun. And I’m going to miss it, too. So I think there was definitely potential there, but they made the best decision for what they thought it was and we’ve just gotta live with it and kind of move on.”

Philadelphia sent him to Oklahoma City for a first-round pick and two seconds. He is aware that a large portion of the Sixers’ fanbase was upset. In the moment, he was too.

“I’m right there with the fans,” McCain said. “I was scared, man. I didn’t know. I was emotional with it, it was a lot going on and it was hard to process. So I’m forever still grateful for Philly. It’s always hard. Like, you don’t get to say goodbye. It’s really like a breakup.”

The call from Sixers general manager Daryl Morey was to the point. Afterward, he flew with the rest of the team from San Francisco to Los Angeles as scheduled, shedding tears as he got on the plane. While everybody else had a game against the Los Angeles Lakers the next day, he flew from L.A. to OKC. 

“They call you and it’s just so, like, cold, almost,” McCain said. “It’s like, damn. They drafted me. It just feels like it just ended so quickly. The call that you get traded is, like, ‘Hey, we just traded you,’ and that’s kind of it. So it’s really, it’s almost sad. It’s really sad. It really is sad. Like, I’m an emotional person. I really, like, I love all those people over there, like the staff, like the medical staff, the coaching staff. The teammates, like, those are like my brothers. I really looked up to a lot of ’em and hung out with all of ’em. It’s sad that you don’t see ’em every day.”

At a press conference the day after the trade deadline, Morey called McCain “a great future bet and a potential great player,” but also said that he thought the team was “selling high” and was better off with the draft picks, which he described as more than a typical return for a starter-level player on a good team. Morey’s transparency only amplified the discussion around the deal, which basically boiled down to how to properly value a player who was about to turn 22.

“It’s really weird sometimes, like, hearing people talk about what you’re ‘worth,'” McCain said. “And it’s because I’m really, you know — there’s a human aspect to it that a lot of people skip over. So hearing stuff that he said in the media, it’s like, ‘Damn. Is that how you really felt?’ ‘Cause I feel like I treated everybody with respect and love. So it’s definitely tough to hear sometimes, but you gotta understand it’s a business and they’re doing what they feel is best.”

McCain described the trade as sad, weird and emotional, but the whirlwind of it all can also be funny. He remembers being “kicked off” Philadelphia’s team-run group chat “pretty immediately.” He needed Gilgeous-Alexander’s help to get into the practice facility in Oklahoma City because he wasn’t set up in the security system yet, as documented on his vlog. He thinks he still has a few black jerseys in the Sixers’ practice facility. At some point, he’ll put away a bunch of Philly gear in his new attic.

“I just moved into my new place and I don’t even know where stuff is right now,” McCain said. “My mom moved me in. I’m going back to the house for the first time. This will be the first time, tonight, when we get back. It’s a lot of stuff that’s very humorous.”

Right after the trade, Kyle Lowry told McCain, “This is supposed to happen.” Seventeen years ago, the Memphis Grizzlies traded Lowry to the Houston Rockets for a first-round pick, having drafted Mike Conley to play his position the previous summer. (Ironically, Morey was the buyer in that transaction.)

“He knows how hard I work, and he just told me, ‘Go do your thing,'” McCain said. “And he’s always there for me if I need him. Really, anybody on that team, like, if I call ’em, I know they’ll be there: Tyrese, Jo, PG, VJ. All of ’em, man. They really helped me. And VJ just called me like two days ago to just talk.”

McCain is looking forward to playing against his former team in Philadelphia on March 23. “I love Philly to death,” he said, “and I’m excited to go back in later March, just to feel the vibes and see all the people again and just say a proper goodbye.” 

Right now, though, he’s doing his best to stay present with the Thunder. “When you take a step back and just kind of look at everything going on, it’s all for good,” he said. “It’s all going to be positive and work out for me.” He’s still getting himself situated in OKC, but he couldn’t be more comfortable with how things are going.

“I’ve loved every moment of it,” McCain said.