As Jared McCain’s transition three-pointer splashed through the net, VJ Edgecombe yelled “Yeah, ‘Mac!’” in his face.
And on the opposite end of the floor, the 76ers’ bench was going nuts for the second-year guard.
“That’s all you want as a player,” McCain said. “Making shots, you want your team to be excited for you. When I looked over at the bench and they were all jumping up and down, it was a fun time.”
They were celebrating one of the four three-pointers that McCain buried during Tuesday’s fourth quarter as part of a 17-point night on 5-of-6 shooting from beyond the arc. It was the scoring punch the Sixers needed in a 139-122 bounce-back home victory over the Milwaukee Bucks, with sixth man Quentin Grimes out with a sprained ankle.
More importantly, it was a long-awaited breakout performance for McCain, who has struggled to rediscover his offensive rhythm since returning from knee and thumb surgeries.
“What I’m most grateful for,” McCain said, “is just being able to stay mentally ready and know it’s going to come.”
McCain entered Tuesday averaging 6.4 points on 36.1% shooting from the floor in 32 games. It felt far removed from last season, when the former first-round draft pick averaged 15.3 points — and connected on 38.3% of his 5.8 three-point attempts — in his first 23 NBA games, making him an early Rookie of the Year front-runner before a torn meniscus and thumb ligament sidelined him for nearly 11 months.
Yet Tuesday’s welcomed upswing also could be viewed as a continuation of perhaps the only silver lining of the Sixers’ dreadful 130-93 loss Monday afternoon in Charlotte, N.C. With the starters removed in the fourth quarter, McCain, who played one season at nearby Duke, scored 12 of his 16 points on 4-of-6 shooting from deep.
There was no such thing as garbage time, McCain insisted. The cliche that simply seeing the ball drop through the net builds confidence is accurate, he added. And when Grimes was ruled out of Tuesday’s matchup about an hour before tipoff, McCain knew he would get rotation minutes.
Those came even quicker when Edgecombe picked up two early fouls. McCain got his first two buckets — stepping into a three-pointer from the left wing, then driving to the bucket for a crafty layup — while playing in the two-man game with star center Joel Embiid. Nurse also appreciated McCain’s “really good decisions” with the ball in his hands, with three assists in 24 minutes, 10 seconds and using attacks to ignite the “chain-reaction ball movement” as the Sixers shot 52.5% from the floor.
Then came McCain’s fourth-quarter shooting flurry.
He opened the period by taking a dribble handoff from Paul George for a pull-up from the right wing to give the Sixers a 109-95 advantage. Then he spotted up for another less than three minutes later, pushing the Sixers’ lead to 16 points. And 20 seconds after taking the feed from Edgecombe for that fastbreak launch, McCain received a pass off an offensive rebound by Justin Edwards for the corner shot.
“Maybe I’m starting to predict the future,” All-Star teammate Tyrese Maxey said after the game, “I [told McCain], ‘Man you’re going to hit four threes tonight.’ And he hit five.’”
Before this week, McCain had been navigating a challenging path back to the court.
He dealt with a clunky knee brace that made him feel unbalanced, along with protection on his shooting hand. Though Nurse said McCain needed to log more minutes to work through rust and mistakes, Edgecombe and Grimes had passed him on the depth chart. McCain was assigned to the G League’s Delaware Blue Coats for a second time less than two weeks ago, going 5-of-18 from the floor and committing six turnovers in his only game at the Noblesville Boom on Jan. 18. He traveled from Indiana back to the Sixers less than 48 hours later, but still had slipped completely out of the rotation.
During that stretch as an observer, McCain said he paid close attention to where he would get shots in the Sixers’ offense and visualized those attempts going in. He also rededicated himself to the practice of staying present. During Tuesday’s morning meditation, he said, he focused on feeling his breath in through his nostrils, then the heat of the exhale on his upper lip.
“That just sets you into the present moment,” McCain said, “and I think that’s what I carried over.”
Nurse, meanwhile, recognized the adversity had initially been “really hard” for McCain to shoulder. Yet the coach noticed a recent flip to more outward positivity “whether he’s playing or not, which is hard to do coming out of the season he had” before the injuries.
“I just keep telling him to have patience and hang in there,” Nurse said. “I say to him, ‘Listen, things will change, I guarantee you. Before too long, something’s going to happen where something’s going to open up for you.”
That opportunity arrived Tuesday. And it culminated in four long-range splashes in the fourth quarter — and a fired-up Sixers bench.
“I knew my time was going to come,” McCain said. “And I knew it’s going to continue to come.”
