Sometimes, trades in the NBA are so strange that fans immediately think one team has to know something the rest of us don't. That was the case when the Philadelphia 76ers traded Jared McCain for a first-round pick (via Houston) that will fall in the 20s.
Turns out, there was no big secret plan for the 76ers; they kind of just gave McCain away for a pick that will likely turn into a worse player than Jared McCain. Meanwhile, McCain has been exactly what 76ers fans knew him to be; a dead-eye, movement shooter who has barely played one season worth of NBA basketball and should only get better as he earns more experience.
Fans in Philly weren't overreacting when they melted down after this trade. McCain was already a draft success story and a favorite in the city, and then he was traded extremely anticlimactically before the deadline. Everyone's assumption that he would be a perfect fit in OKC was correct. There was no overthinking from fans; there was just underthinking from the front office in Philadelphia.
76ers fans will never get over trading Jared McCain
And that's understandable, to be honest. There was pretty much zero justification from 76ers GM Daryl Morey after this move, and that's what hurt Philly fans the most. He claimed they were "selling high" on McCain, which wasn't true (they almost certainly could have gotten a better pick for him) and implies that McCain's value will somehow drop in the future and this pick is the best possible return they could ever get for him.
That also doesn't even answer the question of why the 76ers wanted to trade McCain in the first place! We still don't really know why that was the case. There is a logjam in the backcourt in Philadelphia. VJ Edgecombe and Tyrese Maxey are the backcourt of the future, and Quentin Grimes is a great backup. But the team didn't even want Grimes on the team this year, so they will enter 2026-27 with basically no guard depth. That's not the Thunder's fault, though.
The Thunder got a young guard who is only getting better for a late first round pick that wasn't even theirs. Sometimes, teams get great players because other teams just don't think they could acquire them. Sam Presti has never had that problem.
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