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Report: Sixers Don’t Expect Jordan McRae To Report To Camp

By Eric Mullin

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The start of Philadelphia 76ers training camp is under two weeks away, yet the final few spots of the roster remain up in the air. After the signing of Kendall Marshall, along with the report of T.J. McConnell not having actually signed a deal with the Sixers, it appeared that the 20-man training camp was finally set.

That was until yesterday, when Arselan Kazemi posted a picture on his Instagram of a contract from the Sixers. If that offer is indeed true, and Kazemi accepts the deal, then it would put the Sixers over the limit for players allowed in training camp. But last night the Kazemi news began to make a little more sense, as Michael Kaskey-Blomain of Philadunkia reported that the Sixers do not expect Jordan McRae to attend training camp:

A couple of weeks ago the Sixers offered McRae the required contract tender, which allowed them to keep his rights for this season if he decides to sign overseas again.

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McRae was selected 58th overall in the 2014 draft by the San Antonio Spurs and his rights were traded to the Sixers on draft night. Upon acquiring McRae the Sixers plan all along was to stash him overseas right away, so the University of Tennessee product spent his first professional season in Australia.

In 40 games overseas, McRae averaged 19.4 points, 4.5 rebounds, and 3.1 assists, while shooting 44.1 percent from the floor and  35.1 percent from deep. His rights were then acquired late in the NBADL season by the Delaware 87ers, where McRae would appear in 13 games while averaging 18.4 points.

Coming into summer league play McRae was one player to keep an eye on, to see if he had improved his game enough to give himself a chance of cracking the Sixers 2015-16 roster. But McRae proved to be almost the same exact player from a year ago, as he put up bad shot after bad shot on his way to shooting just 29.5 percent from the field in his four-game summer league stint.

Either the Sixers do not want to offer McRae a partially-guaranteed, long-term deal or the two sides can not come to an agreement on a contract. Either way McRae is put into a tough situation for this upcoming season. He could either accept the non-guaranteed tender of $525k and compete for one of the final spots on the roster in camp, or not accept the tender and sign a deal overseas for the second consecutive year.

My early guess would be that McRae does not accept the contract tender and instead signs overseas. The Sixers are currently loaded with at the wing position with Nik Stauskas, Robert Covington, JaKarr Sampson, Hollis Thompson, and Jerami Grant. When factoring in J.P. Tokoto and a few combo guards that are going to be fighting for spots as well, it would be hard to imagine McRae making the team unless he had an almost flawless performance during training camp and preseason.

Next: Ranking The Sixers Plethora Of Point Guards

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