Oklahoma City’s offseason shuffle is already pointing to a pretty specific question: how much will Jared McCain have to reshape his shot profile to fill the void left by Isaiah Joe?
The Thunder have spent the past week and change making it clear what next season is starting to look like. Aaron Wiggins and Isaiah Joe are on their way out, while rookies Aday Mara and Bennett Stirtz are coming in. That movement has created a simple conclusion: Oklahoma City is preparing for McCain to handle the sharpshooting job Joe has owned for the past few years.
McCain wasted little time becoming a real piece of the Thunder rotation after being acquired at the trade deadline. His role wasn’t fully settled late in the regular season, but injuries helped open the door in the playoffs, and he took advantage. Mark Daigneault leaned on him heavily throughout the postseason, including multiple starts in the conference finals, and Oklahoma City got enough of a look to believe he can be the team’s lone specialist from deep next season.
The shooting is already there. McCain has hit 38.5% of his career threes, and he finished third on the Thunder in 3-point attempts per game at 4.6, behind Joe and Lu Dort. But the bigger issue isn’t whether he can make shots - it’s whether he’ll need to take them differently.
Because Oklahoma City was short on creators for much of McCain’s time with the team, he had to do more self-creation than he likely would in a more complete lineup. That helps explain why 55.4% of his shots after arriving in the regular season came from beyond the arc, and why that number was 51.5% in the playoffs. Even so, the Thunder may need him to lean much harder into the 3-point-heavy role Joe mastered.
That 51.5% mark ranked only seventh among Thunder players in the postseason. Joe’s numbers show just how extreme the shift would be if McCain is asked to fully replace him: Joe took 78.8% of his shots from 3-point range in the regular season and 83.6% in the playoffs.
Expecting McCain to jump from a little over half of his attempts from deep to Joe’s level probably isn’t realistic. His mid-range game still matters. But if Oklahoma City wants to preserve the spacing and off-ball shooting Joe supplied, McCain will likely need to give the Thunder more of that pure catch-and-shoot volume, especially if Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell stay healthy and continue operating as mid-range threats.
McCain’s ability to score in multiple ways is a luxury, particularly in the postseason. Still, the Thunder’s next step may depend on getting him to look more like the kind of off-ball marksman Joe was.
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The choice stands out because it cuts against the more incremental, constantly adjusting style Presti has used to build value over time. The Thunder have already trimmed depth to create financial breathing room, and every move now seems tied to the same larger question: how to keep the roster strong enough to win now without boxing themselves in later. Holmgren sits right at the center of that calculation, which is why his place in Oklahoma City feels less settled than most others, even if the team is not acting like it. [Read more 🡒]