For as much heat as Daryl Morey — and to some extent ownership — took for trading Jared McCain at last season’s deadline, let’s not forget that Nick Nurse played at least somewhat of a role in the departure of the team’s 2024 first-round pick. Nurse was quoted as saying McCain had gone through a “tough couple years” back in February when McCain was shipped out to Oklahoma City.
Obviously, Nurse was hinting at the meniscus injury that cut McCain’s rookie year short and the UCL tear in his thumb ahead of training camp. However, McCain was never really fully integrated into Philadelphia’s rotation upon his return from the injury in 2025-26 and was traded before the season even ended. So it stands to reason that Nurse was lukewarm at best on the idea of McCain playing anywhere from 25-35 minutes a night and the writing was on the wall for McCain’s exit out of town.
The primary draft pick Philadelphia received in the trade with Oklahoma City has now been turned into Labaron Philon Jr., a guard who’s only one inch taller than McCain. When Josh Harris and Bob Myers held a press conference announcing Morey’s dismissal, the McCain trade was at the center of a frequent line of questioning from the local media. Nurse was retained at the end of the season and so clearly the Sixers’ brain trust had to be on the same page with incoming president Mike Gansey on how to deploy their guards moving forward.
While Philon isn’t any taller than VJ Edgecombe, and is only slightly taller than Tyrese Maxey, there has to be a plan on how to avoid a McCain 2.0 situation. But just because Philon is similar in height to McCain and the other guards that will play prominently in the Sixers’ rotation in 2026-27, doesn’t mean this is going to play out the same way McCain’s tenure as a Sixer did.
Philon has done what most teams want their first-round picks to do in Summer League. He’s gotten a lot of minutes, put up a lot of shots and flashed the skills that made him worthy of a selection in the first round. Understandably so, the Sixers have been playing through Philon when he’s been on the court. What’s been recognizable is the versatility in how Philon has been scoring.
Unlike McCain, Philon seems comfortable being able to score at all three levels, with the obvious caveat that he’s doing so in Summer League games. Nevertheless, he’s getting to the basket and finishing around the rim. He’s scoring off the dribble in the midrange area and he looks comfortable from the three-point line when he lets it fly from deep. Additionally, Philon is a much better passer entering the NBA than McCain was at this time two years ago and McCain’s passing skills haven’t improved much since he got drafted.
The bottom line here is that Philon seems like a player that’s good at a lot of different things while McCain was someone who was elite at shooting and had work to do in other areas if he was going to become a more well-rounded guard. That doesn’t mean that Philon is destined to have the better NBA career, but it does suggest that Philon would seem to be a better fit with Maxey and Edgecombe than McCain was.
If you already have two smaller guards in Maxey and Edgecombe anchoring your backcourt, how much sense does it make to play a third small guard that doesn’t handle the ball or pass well with those two? If McCain was three or four inches taller and a knockdown shooter as a small forward, he might have fit more naturally with Maxey and Edgecombe.
Philon’s ability to run the offense if needed should give Nurse more options. You would think just about everyone in the organization would sign up for Maxey’s minutes to be reduced a bit in the regular season. Well, Philon could allow Maxey to rest a little more during certain games, but he could also more naturally be the team’s primary ball handler leaving Maxey to play off the ball and perhaps not tire out as quickly.
Additionally, if the Sixers just want to play faster this year, Philon’s a niftier guard that would have more success in transition than McCain would. In an era of positionless basketball, having three good athletes in Philon, Maxey and Edgecombe all on the floor at the same time should allow the Sixers to get out and run off missed field goals from the opponent pretty routinely.
None of this is meant to validate trading away McCain or imply that Philon is certain to be the better NBA player. There’s certainly a world in which this works out for everyone and the Sixers’ vision of a backcourt with all three of their current guards makes more sense and McCain settles into a long career with a winning franchise like the Thunder.
We should note that McCain only started two games for the Thunder in the postseason which might indicate that on a contending team, McCain might never be more than a shooter that comes off the bench. In other words, McCain’s one elite skill might be enough for him to have a long NBA career by itself. But Philon’s wider array of skills might give him a higher ceiling and certainly fits better with the current version of the Philadelphia 76ers.
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