Sixers Traded Guard Depth for a Pick and Now the Backcourt Is Paying for It
Jan 5, 2026; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Philadelphia 76ers guard Vj Edgecombe (77) and guard Tyrese Maxey (0) talk during the third quarter against the Denver Nuggets at Xfinity Mobile Arena. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-Imagn Images
The loss to New York last Wednesday felt less like a bad night and more like the natural result of a backcourt built with no cushion. When the Sixers needed another guard to steady possessions or close defensive gaps, there simply wasn’t one, and the Jared McCain trade suddenly looked less like future planning and more like present-day subtraction.
Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe were forced into heavy minutes and difficult assignments, often defending actions that left them exposed. That kind of defensive unraveling is rarely a question of effort, but rather a direct symptom of what happens when the margin for error has been traded away. Though Maxey put up 32 points and Edgecombe put up 14 points, both guards played 32 minutes and were -26 and -29 in points differential while on the floor.
Moving McCain to Oklahoma City at the deadline was a massive gamble on future flexibility, but it essentially stripped this roster of the only viable safety net standing behind its primary creators. McCain had just started to find his rhythm, giving them a guard who could actually run the second unit without everything stalling. His seamless transition to an elite Thunder team underscores the exact type of connective tissue Philadelphia is suddenly missing. In exchange, the front office acquired a 2026 Houston first-round pick, a pick that only helps if it turns into something real later. If the Rockets stumble in a crowded Western Conference, that selection could become the precise currency required to land a high-level rotation piece in next year’s draft. But if Houston maintains their play from the first half, the Sixers will have sacrificed a functional, present-day guard who can run the offense for five minutes for a late-first-round asset they lack the depth to comfortably wait on.
It raises an obvious question for both readers and the Sixers’ front office: Is there really a guard at the tail end of the draft who replaces McCain seamlessly?
The downstream effect of losing McCain is that Quentin Grimes has been abruptly reclassified from a rotational luxury to an absolute necessity. This setup was immediately exposed when Grimes recently missed two games with an illness, forcing Nick Nurse into some desperate lineup configurations. Instead of a natural flow, we watched a nearly 40-year-old Kyle Lowry play eighteen exhausting minutes in Portland alongside MarJon Beauchamp, a pairing that predictably dissolved in the second half as the offensive spacing was at a premium.
Nurse has been forced to stagger Maxey and Edgecombe with desperation, and whenever Edgecombe is asked to run the floor without Maxey, the coaching staff has had to size up with bigger wings because the foundational ball-handling required to maintain an offensive rhythm simply doesn’t exist on the bench at the moment. The one who truly suffers in this case is Edgecombe, whose growth, which has exceeded expectations to this point, is on the line when the rotations run thin.
This naturally turns the focus toward the buyout market, though the options for adding another steady guard are disappearing fast. The front office has acknowledged the need for a guard and a wing, with Paul George being out for a large remainder of the season, yet the reality of mid-February additions is that you are often choosing between injured veterans and unproven gambles. An idealized target was Khris Middleton, who made his debut for the Mavericks earlier this week and has already brushed off the idea of a buyout, signaling that he intends to finish the season in Dallas. With Chris Paul formally retiring after his waiver in Toronto, and players like Mike Conley and Cam Thomas entirely off the board, the Sixers are left sifting through names like Lonzo Ball or Haywood Highsmith, players who bring their own distinct set of physical or rotational questions rather than much-needed stability.
As the regular season grinds toward the spring, the primary pressure point will not simply be the health of the starting five, but whether this thinned-out roster can sustain the possession-by-possession attrition that playoff basketball demands. The front office has reconstructed a team that relies heavily on its stars to transcend the limitations of the bench. It’s a gamble that inherently assumes the playoffs will be decided by top-end talent rather than rotational depth. This approach rarely holds up in the postseason. With an aging star who already needs load management to keep his knees fresh, depth isn’t a luxury here; it’s survival.
We have watched similar experiments unfold with other Sixers squads before, and when the lights shine brightest in May, it is usually the lack of that one extra, reliable ball-handler that prematurely turns the lights out on a season. The Sixers were feeling ahead of the curve in terms of their rebuild, but thinning out the strength of the team hasn’t made the team better. It has been a small sample size thus far, but the games against Portland and the Knicks have highlighted a glaring miscue by the 76ers’ front office, who appear not to prioritize depth and have to covet something late in the draft based on trading away McCain to a contender.
Steve Hamilton
Steve may have been born in California, but don’t let that fool you. After dating a local woman and clashing with her and her family over sports for decades, he has an affinity for Philly sports. Balancing love for Philly and Bay Area sports teams may seem impossible, we can all agree that the Cowboys are the true evil.
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