Jared McCain has a lot of Steph Curry traits. The Sixers were wise not to pass that up.

The comp is going to sound absurd. I’m well aware of that.

I tried not to make it, tried to soft pedal it, tried to find a few other players who A) encapsulated the thing that Jared McCain’s skill set suggests he can become, and B) Illustrated the Sixers’ decision to select him at No. 16 was not only justified but a heartening sign that Daryl Morey’s head is in the right place.

A more efficient Trae Young? A shorter Desmond Bane? Immanuel Quickley?

Stop.

Steph Curry. That’s the comp. It just is.

» READ MORE: Sixers select Duke’s Jared McCain at No. 16 in first round of NBA draft

There’s a very good chance I will regret writing that sentence, because there is a very small chance that McCain reaches even 75% of his ceiling. That’s just the way it is with 19-year-old kids who get drafted in the middle of the first round. You are lucky if they turn out to be an NBA starter, let alone a game-alterer.

It’s silly to think that McCain will become Steph Curry. But, then, it was silly to think Steph Curry would become Steph Curry when the Warriors drafted him seventh overall in 2009. Heck, it was silly to think it after three years in the league.

This isn’t a question of what will happen, or what should happen, or even what has a strong chance of happening.

The operative word is might.

It is impossible to say what any player will become. The rarest of players are the ones where it is impossible to say what they won’t become. McCain’s skill set puts him in that category.

To call him merely a shooter is to relegate him to a bucket of players who have never and will never and can never possess the element of making that matters the most. There are plenty of players who can knock down 41.4% of their three-point shots, as McCain did in his one season at Duke. There are plenty of players who can do it at a high volume, as McCain did with his 5.8 three-point attempts per game. But most of those players are shooters, not scorers. McCain doesn’t just have an elite ability to shoot. He has an elite ability to get that shot off.

It is a rare thing. Incredibly rare. What makes McCain so intriguing can’t be captured in numbers. It is the footwork, the balance, the pop time, the body control, the release, the navigation of space on or off the dribble. He has it. He just does.

“I’ve been working on it my whole life now,” McCain said Wednesday. “Shooting is something I’ve always loved to do and been good at. I think having the quick release is going to be extremely helpful being a smaller guard in the league, just being able to get it off quick. It will help me a lot.”

» READ MORE: Who is Jared McCain, the Sixers’ first-round pick? The Duke star has a large social media presence.

In comparing him to Curry, I am talking mostly about this thing. I don’t know how it will manifest itself at the NBA level. I don’t know if McCain has the potential for anything close to the elite, elite handle and first step that allow Curry to do whatever he wants at whatever time against whatever competition on whatever NBA court. I’m not saying that McCain has a chance to become one of the greatest players who ever lived. I’m simply saying that he has the attributes to become a player in the mold of Curry: an elite shot, the ability to get it off at any time he chooses, and, thus, the ability to become the kind of player who scores at a level that offsets whatever limitations he has on the defensive end.

“Being able to shoot threes at a high volume and be in the high 30s, low 40s [percentage] is maybe the most valuable skill in the NBA,” Morey said. “It’s on the list. So that’s a big, big part of the calculus with Jared, 100%, absolutely.”

The point is that McCain is a much different player than a team typically reckons with at No. 16. He has a reasonably high floor, relatively speaking. In fact, there will be those who argue that his more likely outcome is closer not to Steph Curry but to younger brother Seth. It is a worthy comp, and one that would yield a net value at No. 16. It also might be a good way to envision McCain’s floor. But I see something more here.

First, I see a degree of sneaky athleticism and physicality. The rebounds should jump out at you. There aren’t a lot of supposedly one-dimensional, physically overmatched players who average 5.0 rebounds per game in the ACC. McCain is bigger than Seth. Stronger. More solidly put together. He has elements of smaller guys who stuck in the NBA not because of their virtuoso scoring but their toughness (Kyle Lowry, Fred Van Vleet, etc).

People will say that Steph is quicker. They’ll point to the handle and the first step. And maybe they are correct. It has been a long time since I watched Curry take the nation by storm during his three seasons at Davidson. But the measurables say that McCain ran a faster lane agility drill at the combine, and a faster three-quarter court sprint.

But the thing that really catches my eye is the personality. The 2.4 million TikTok subscribers, the painted fingernails, the corny dances — those are not the negatives that people are interpreting. There is a certain degree of creativity inherent in all of the big-time shot-makers, regardless of sport. McCain has it. He has the swagger. He brings with him a flair and dynamism that can serve as a force multiplier. It is one of the chief X factors that puts Curry in a realm by himself amongst history’s great similarly-sized shooters.

That, more than anything else, is why McCain should have been impossible to pass up at No. 16, and probably a lot of the picks before it.

We didn’t see the full extent of it at Duke, for a variety of reasons, the first being that it is Duke. You do not go to Duke to take 20 shots per game and showcase the skills that project to the NBA. McCain played in an offense that was built around a versatile big in Kyle Filipowski, and deservedly so.

But we did see flashes of it, and we saw them during the stretch of the schedule that has long served as predictor of NBA performance. Two of his three highest scoring performances on the season came in the NCAA Tournament, including a 32-point effort in an Elite Eight loss to NC State where McCain hit 5-of-11 from three-point range and 11-of-11 from the foul line. Earlier, in the second round, he scored 35 against James Madison, knocking down 8-of-11 from deep.

There have been 11 players in NCAA Tournament history who have had multiple games of 30-plus points and 5-plus three-pointers made in the same season. Curry and McCain are two of them. Also on the list: Glen Rice, Dennis Scott, Glenn Robinson, Buddy Hield, Bo Kimble, and Jay Williams. All of those players were either drafted in the top eight and/or went on to have NBA careers that more than warranted a pick at No. 16.

There will always be a place in the NBA for a guy who can shoot 40% from deep, whether it is his first or 14th season. The Sixers could struggle to find situations where it makes sense to have McCain on the court with a fellow undersized guard in Tyrese Maxey. It is a particularly acute consideration in the near term, and could easily end up a dilemma for however long they remain together.

But to focus on this is to ignore the upside. The fact that the Sixers made the pick at all tells you they think it could be there. They entered draft night pondering the established veterans for whom they might trade their first-round pick. Morey has made it clear that he is operating with a heavy bias toward the short-term, given the Sixers’ current juncture with Joel Embiid at age 30. The club president said he had an offer on the table for a veteran who would have been a meaningful and more immediately impactful addition, and might yet in a later deal. They simply could not pass up the chance to take their chances on McCain.

That’s a heartening thing. This was the exact sort of opportunity that the Sixers could not afford to pass up in the interest of chasing a title in 2024-25. That they didn’t offers some hope that they are approaching this offseason in the optimal manner. Winning now is important. But winning later is the sort of thing that can also start now.

It may not work. It often doesn’t. But McCain has a skill set that can make him an asset even if he never becomes a star. He is the sort of player who has a good chance to become more valuable than the pick with which he was drafted. You don’t trade away a chance at TikTok Steph for Dalton Knecht or the next De’Anthony Melton.

Forget about championships for a moment. Finding out about the “might” can be a lot of fun.