Section 215
Fansided

Philadelphia 76ers: Signing Patrick McCaw all but guarantees a championship

By Matty Breisch

(Photo by Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images)
(Photo by Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images) /
facebooktwitterreddit

With the Eastern Conference up for grabs in 2019-20, the Philadelphia 76ers should all but guarantee themselves a championship by signing Patrick McCaw.

Winning an NBA Championship is hard, so if a team, like, say, the Philadelphia 76ers, can find a secret weapon to improve their chances considerably, why shouldn’t they take said advantage?

I mean, it only makes sense, right?

Well, what if I were to tell you they could all but guarantee a spot in the NBA Finals by simply signing a young, developmental 3-and-D wing to a low-to-mid-level contract next week?

More from Philadelphia 76ers

Sounds too good to be true, right? Well then, you must not be familiar with Patrick McCaw.

Initially drafted 38th overall in the 2016 NBA Draft by the Milwaukee Bucks out of UNLV, McCaw’s rights were immediately sold to the Golden State Warriors for $2.4 million to help bolster out the team’s bench with cheap, high upside reserves (you know, like how teams are supposed to use second-round picks).  While he was never much of an impact on the offensive end of the court, as he only averaged four points a night over his 128 game tenure with the Warriors, McCaw was a valuable defensive piece for Steve Kerr and company both in the regular and postseason.

And for his troubles, McCaw earned a pair of NBA Championship rings; one as a rookie and one as a sophomore.

Now this isn’t a particularly impressive feat, as plenty of young players like Kevon Looney and Damian Jones have amassed a pretty impressive collection of hardware while spending most of their time on the Warriors’ bench, but what happened next was pretty improbable.

You see, with his two-year second-round rookie contract expired, McCaw and the Warriors’ front office came to a bit of an impasse. Unwilling to play on a one-year tender, and uninterested in signing the two-year, $5.2 million deal the team extended, McCaw sat out for the first half of the 2018-19 season before eventually signing a non-guaranteed two-year, $6 million contract with the post-LeBron James Cleveland Cavaliers.

From there, McCaw toiled away in obscurity and all but ruined his chances to stick in the NBA… just kidding.

McCaw was waived by Cleveland on January 6th, six days after signing with the Cavs, in a move that became pretty contested around the league. While this was obviously a setback for McCaw, as he only earned a fraction of his potential $6 million payday ($323,529 as per The Ringer), it opened the doors for the former Runnin’ Rebel to sign a one-year, $786,211 fully guaranteed deal with the Toronto Raptors.

Spoiler alert, they won an NBA Championship too.

While McCaw wasn’t as essential to the team’s run as say, Kyle Lowry, Marc Gasol, or Pascal Siakam (not to mention Kawhi Leonard), he did log 12 minutes against his former squad in the finals – scoring three points on two shots from the field.

Not great, but hey, we’ll let it slide.

So with McCaw now the only player in NBA history to win three straight Chips despite switching teams in his first three seasons in the league, should the Sixers be interested in his services for the 2019-20 season?

Duh.

All jokes aside, McCaw isn’t a game changer at this stage of his career, but he is a solid 3-and-D wing prospect with a little more room to grow despite being 23 years old. Though he won’t get you very many 3s – as he’s only averaged 0.4 makes a game on 1.5 attempts – and he’s yet to finish out a season as a top-50 defensive shooting guard according to ESPN’s Real Plus-Minus, McCaw is a long, athletic guard/forward hybrid who could form a very formidable tandem with 2019 draftee Matisse Thybulle on Brett Brown‘s second unit.

Next. Matisse Thybulle could turn into defensive steal for Philadelphia 76ers. dark

With the fate of the Eastern Conference up for grabs, the Philadelphia 76ers should at least consider signing Patrick McCaw, if for nothing else than to get the basketball gods on their side.