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Jared McCain is Now So Good That They’re Sending Goons After Him
By Matt Schultz
Published:
As if it hasn’t been brutal enough for Sixers fans having to watch Jared McCain become an integral part of Oklahoma City’s offense during the Western Conference Finals – in the Thunder’s last two wins, Jared dropped 24 and 20 points respectively and averaged 30.1 minutes – it just got worse. McCain has officially developed into a good enough player that opposing teams are sending in goons to rough him up:
“Yeah that was crazy. I didn’t expect it obviously. We’re at the free throw line too and I was like, ‘Why’d you do that, man?’ I’m just asking him a question, and he’s like, ‘I got another one for you, too.’”
I didn’t think I could feel much worse about the trade, but here we are. Jared has become so good that Mason Plumlee and Bismack Biyombo are getting minutes just to whoop his ass, which is truly a major leap for him. Now, I’m not gonna sit here and say I expected this. I’m not gonna claim that when he was drafted, I thought McCain would grow into the kind of hooper that massive, lumbering ogres are sent after with elbows swinging. I’m not even saying I thought Jared was good enough to be targeted by a 40-year-old center’s chip block when he was a Sixer, because I didn’t. But you can’t argue with the footage: Jared has elevated to a new plane – he now has the attention of the goons, and as a Sixers fan, that’s pretty heartbreaking. There simply aren’t that many players in the NBA that are so effective, so tiresome, so talented that a team will put a bounty on his head for the end-of-the-bench, 2011 Draft Class oafs to collect. To think that the Sixers had one and sent him out for pennies on the dollar is extremely rough.
I know we’ve been over this a hundred times, but you really can’t help but wonder how Daryl Morey could’ve botched this trade this badly. Isn’t Daryl’s whole thing advanced predictive modeling? How did his Sloane Conference-ass, analytically driven scouting reports not foresee that Jared McCain would someday be good enough to be smacked in the face by a career backup center averaging five minutes per game, who’s been in the game for such a short amount of time that he’s not even sweating? Shouldn’t Daryl’s advanced data science have told him that Jared would someday hit the deck in a yelping heap after a 7-foot, 260-lb. behemoth threw a forearm right between his shoulder blades? Why didn’t Daryl’s AI forecasting software create a simulation of Jared crashing to the floor and hitting the back of his head on Mason Plumlee’s leg – a leg that hasn’t bent in over a decade because his knees are completely shot? Sadly, I think we’ll all be asking ourselves these questions for a long time.
I’m happy for Jared – I really am. For him to reach sic-the-goons-on-him level of hooper is a big accomplishment. It’s just a damn shame it’s not happening on the Sixers.
Matt Schultz is a comedy and sports writer from Philadelphia. He’s written extensively for ClickHole, The Onion, and Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco. His work has been featured in Vulture, Deadspin, The A.V. Club, Paste Magazine, and other publications. Much of his sports journalism can be found on college basketball websites that don’t exist anymore (PhilaHoops Heads rise up…)