It was well after 10 Monday night, well after Jared McCain’s new team, the Oklahoma City Thunder, had beaten his old one, the 76ers. And still McCain, in street clothes by then, lingered in Xfinity Mobile Arena’s lower stands, visiting with friends.
A handful of people hovered about the place. Workers folded up chairs and pulled up ratty carpeting, the beginning stages of the changeover for Tuesday’s Flyers game. Some kids romped around the court, firing shots in the general direction of the rim.
“Jared,” one of them yelled up to McCain, “can we get a picture, please?”
“Yeah, I gotcha, buddy,” the second-year guard said.
A minute or two later he made good on his promise, posing with four youngsters in various Sixers jerseys – two Joel Embiids, one James Harden, one Dr. J.
It was almost as if McCain didn’t want to leave.
He played just 60 games for the Sixers, spread out over a season and a half. He performed really well for a really bad team last year, not so well for an improved one this year. In between he was injured, twice. He even did some time in the G-League this winter.
But if he struggled to find his place on the court, that was never the case off it. As had been the case elsewhere (and as is the case in OKC), the 22-year-old Californian very clearly made some strong connections, very clearly made himself at home. Which is why the crowd greeted him so warmly when he entered Monday’s game, and why, from the beginning of the night to the end, he always had time for one more photo, one more hug, one more handshake.
“I really believe in, you put good energy out and it comes right back to you,” he said. “And I really feel like I was able to do that with the Sixers and with the fans, with the organization.”
It can be said with certainty that while the Sixers have traded better players than McCain during their long, tortured history, they have seldom traded a better human being. Sixers coach Nick Nurse was saying before the game that McCain’s approach and attitude always stood out as much as his ability as a shooter and scorer – that he is, in Nurse’s words, “a tremendous person, worker and competitor.”
And, the coach added, “That’s always good to have on your team.”
That McCain is not is something that seems likely to stick in the craw of Sixers fans for years to come. He was shipped to the defending champs for four draft picks on Feb. 4, and he has fit like a glove. After averaging 6.6 points a game on .385/.378/.880 shooting splits in 37 games with Philadelphia, he has raised those numbers to 12.3 on .468/.439/.862 accuracy in 20 games with OKC. That includes his 5-for-11, 13-point effort in over 25 minutes off the bench in Monday’s 123-103 victory.
The Thunder had scouted McCain during his lone season at Duke, and thought highly of him. Coach Mark Daigneault alternately called him a “gym rat,” a “self-made player” and a “craftsman” on Monday, and said that while the newcomer has been respectful of the holdovers, he has hardly been deferential.
“He’s been who he is, and has played aggressively and confidently,” Daigneault said, adding that it says as much about the rest of the team as it does McCain – that the other players have “gone out of their way to try to make sure that we’re getting the best version of him.”
The bottom line?
“It’s felt,” the coach said, “like he’s been here longer than he has.”
Still, McCain was more or less on his own when it came to Monday’s homecoming. He had not been back in Philadelphia since the trade, which came in the middle of a road trip, and admitted he felt “a lot of anxiety” about his return.
“When I was meditating this morning, it was a lot of just acceptance of, it’s going to happen,” he said. “You’re going to have those feelings, you’re going to have those emotions” – including, he added, “that subtle feeling of you want to prove the team wrong that traded you.”
He said he tried to put that aside, but he nailed two three-pointers soon after entering the game midway through the first quarter. After the first, from the left corner, he talked some smack to veteran center Andre Drummond – “It’s all love,” McCain said with a grin – and seemed no less emotional after drilling the second, from the top of the circle.
He missed his next five attempts from the floor, but made three of his last four. McCain, who went 3-for-7 from the arc in all, was one of six players to crack double figures for the Thunder, who won their 12th straight to improve their league-best record to 57-15.
McCain said the night provided him “a little bit” of closure. Mostly, though, it had been weird. Weird to walk onto the court before the game and see veteran guard Kyle Lowry, who gave him a big hug, as well as assistant coach Rico Hines and so many others. (“It felt like I was on the Sixers again,” McCain said.) Weird to go to chapel with former teammates Justin Edwards and Adem Bona. And weird not to be able to drive by his old house, which he had loved but was too far from the Thunder’s hotel.
“It had a sauna,” he said. “It was really nice.”
Others had cleaned the place out, under the supervision of his mom. So it was that the cord had been cut, and the page turned.
But the connections remain. As the night wound down, McCain signed one of his old No. 20 Sixers road jerseys for two men, right outside the visiting locker room.
“Next year,” he said to them in parting.
Indeed, that will likely be the next time he is in town – next season. But after thinking it over for a moment, he chose to look at it another way.
“See you guys in the Finals,” he told the men.
Still spreading the positive vibes. Still true to himself. And this night of all nights, feeling it all come back to him, in waves.
Always good to have a guy like that on your team.