The Sixers trading Jared McCain will either be a head-scratcher or an embarrassment

A week ago, Joel Embiid decided to spend a little bit of the organizational capital he re-accrued in recent months. In response to a question about the Sixers’ approach to the upcoming NBA trade deadline, Embiid pointedly expressed his hope that the team would not be looking to add talent rather than to cut costs.

“Obviously, we’ve been ducking the tax past couple of years, so hopefully, we’ll keep the same team,” Embiid said. “I love all the guys that are here. I think we got a shot.

I don’t know what they’re gonna do, but I hope we get a chance to just go out and compete because we’ve got a good group of guys in this locker room. The vibes are great. Like I said, in the past we’ve been I guess ducking the tax, so hopefully we think about improving because I think we have a chance.”

» READ MORE: The Sixers got under the tax and took a small step back at the NBA trade deadline

Embiid was surprisingly — some might say ungraciously — candid in noting the Sixers’ recent prioritization of shedding salary at the trade deadline to avoid paying the NBA’s luxury tax (and, thereby, to receive a share of the pooled taxpayer dollars). But he was also prescient, and unfortunately so.

Sixers president Daryl Morey is scheduled to meet with the media on Friday, so we’ll have to wait to hear the official defense of the team’s decision to trade 2024 first-round pick Jared McCain to the Thunder for what is most likely to be a low-value first round draft (plus the obligatory smattering of second round picks). We don’t have to wait to judge the optics of the thing.

The optics are poor, and will remain true even if the thing ends up making more sense than we can immediately glean. The Sixers didn’t trade McCain for a player who is more likely to help them contend for championship, be it this year or beyond. They didn’t trade him for a pick that they then flipped for a player who can help them capitalize on their momentum this season. Everywhere else, teams got better, and many of them did so in ways beyond this season. The Timberwolves can re-sign Ayo Dosunmu. The Pacers can pair Ivica Zubac with Tyrese Haliburton next season. The Sixers can hope that a late first round pick is worth something in June.

A good way to judge the optics of a move is to attempt to write an executive summary of it in as favorable a way as possible. That’s an extraordinarily difficult task, in this case. The Sixers just traded away a guy who they drafted at No. 16 barely a year-and-a-half ago and who would probably be drafted higher in a redo. In exchange, they received a pick that currently projects as the No. 24 pick in the 2026 draft, three picks later than where the Sixers grabbed Tyrese Maxey six years ago. It is a range of the draft that rarely yields starters, let alone stars. It is a range where the odds say you are more likely to draft a player who never cracks a first-division rotation than one who becomes a meaningful starter.

Just look at the track record. Of the 42 players drafted with the last seven picks of the first round since 2020, only 17 have started more than 17 NBA games. Just eyeballing it, you’d be hard-pressed to identify 10 of those 42 who’ve turned out to be better than the median potential outcome of even this year’s version of McCain. Jaden McDaniels and Desmond Bane are stars. They are followed by Payton Pritchard, Immanuel Quickley, Quentin Grimes and Santi Aldama. Beyond that: Peyton Watson and Cam Thomas, and then Bones Hyland, Day’Ron Sharpe, Nikola Jovic and Kyshawn George. You get the picture.

Risk vs. certainty is the name of the game. The Sixers traded McCain for a first-round pick that will be uncertain even on draft day. Let alone five months before. Whatever negative certainty they felt about McCain’s mid-to-long-term trajectory, it can’t possibly be greater than the negative uncertainty of a draft day replacement. Which is why, optically speaking, the move looks like one that was inordinately influenced by the cost-cutting benefits.

» READ MORE: Trading Jared McCain is a big risk, unless something bigger is in play

The Sixers would/will surely point to optionality as a variable. On draft day, they will have another opportunity to flip the McCain first-rounder for an established NBA player, or to include it in a package. If that influenced the move, then the bet they are making is that the pick will be more in a draft-day trade than McCain would have been himself. There’s a decent chance that is true, given how far McCain has fallen on the depth chart and how little opportunity he could have to reestablish value.

It just rings a little bit hollow to anybody who has bought into the commendable shift we’ve seen from the Sixers in their roster-building strategy over the last year. And it rings especially hollow when you consider that the team that traded for McCain is one of the best and brightest roster-builders in the modern NBA. As somebody said the other day, when Sam Presti wants one of your guys, it’s a good reason to think a few more thoughts about whether you should want to get rid of him.

Barely a year-and-a-half has passed since the Sixers made McCain the No. 16 pick in the 2024 draft. In that year-and-a-half, we’ve seen McCain:

— Play 23 games where he looked like one of the Top 5 players in the draft, forcing his way into the starting lineup and then averaging 19.1 points while shooting .397 from three-point range in 16 games before he suffered a season-ending knee injury.

— Play 25 games where he looked like a player working his way back from a broken thumb that he suffered while working his back from knee surgery.

— Play 11 games in 15-game stretch where he logged just 132 minutes.

In the Sixers’ defense, they’ve seen much more of McCain than the television cameras capture. Nobody can have a more informed opinion on where he projects within the context of their roster. But it wasn’t long ago that McCain looked like a player who could potentially become one who transcends questions of fit. His ceiling was never close to VJ Edgecombe’s level and his probable reality was always short of Maxey’s. Again, though. The Thunder have a lot of guards. They are a team built on a two-way mentality. It makes you wonder.

What it comes down to is that the Sixers better be right in their evaluation of McCain. Whatever the marching orders from ownership with regards to the luxury tax, there is a level of player where even Scrooge McDuck wouldn’t deem him an appropriate cost-savings measure. McCain isn’t that player now. The Sixers could be accurate in their judgment of the odds that he ever becomes one. The question is whether they are accurate in their judgment of their risk of being wrong.