T.J. McConnell Is Part of the Process

There may be no avatar more suitable for the Philadelphia 76ers' infamous Process than T.J. McConnell, an undrafted rookie who has started more than half of the team's games at point guard. This is a complicated sort of compliment, but McConnell highlights the benefits and the shortcomings of the long-term rebuilding strategy. That he's played pretty well is, as is often the case with the Sixers, almost beside the point.

If not for general manager Sam Hinkie's approach to the end of the roster, which eschews veterans in favor of lottery tickets, McConnell might not be an NBA player right now. The 76ers brought him into training camp after a successful summer league stint, and the two-time All-Pac-12 Defensive Team standout fought his way onto the roster against heavy odds, beating out Pierre Jackson and Scottie Wilbekin—and their larger but insignificant guaranteed salaries—for a fourth point guard spot that wasn't supposed to exist.

"When I signed with the Sixers to come to training camp, I knew nothing was guaranteed," McConnell told VICE on Sunday. "So I went with the mentality that I just had to fight every day. "

McConnell doesn't necessarily look like a fighter, with friendly blue eyes and a positive, excited-to-be-here demeanor, but he does looks like a Sixer, in that he doesn't necessarily look much like any other NBA player. He attacks the rim with a bouncy, probing style that's more Floyd Mayweather than Sleepy Floyd, and his jump shot has enough lean to impress Future. McConnell's odd mix of strengths and weaknesses—he's also a deft passer and indefatigable defender—kept him off most draft boards, even after he helped lead Arizona to the Elite Eight; both Draft Express and ESPN's Chad Ford ranked him outside the top 60. Where others may have seen a non-prospect, the Sixers saw a potentially undervalued player who wouldn't even cost them one of their bundle of second-round picks. They took a no-risk chance, and McConnell did the rest.

"The Process and stuff, I've heard it so much," McConnell said. "I'm just trying to be a guy that kind of flew under the radar and picked up, that no one ever expected to be playing in the NBA."

The hypothetical scenario for Philadelphia, going into this year, involved adding a more steady veteran presence to run the offense, feed the team's young post players, and serve as mentors to a very young roster. Whether McConnell was so good that the team had to scrap this strategy or whether the Sixers just opted to go a different way—as usual, they're not saying—the result is familiar. This part of the Sixers' strategy is the one that's been criticized most and put under a greater microscope due to the off-court issues of Jahlil Okafor. The opportunity cost of taking fliers on would-be NBA talent is not using the roster spot on certain NBA talent; the opportunity cost of carrying a rookie is not having a veteran. The result of all these calculations has lost 28 of 29 games this season.

Conversely, the opportunity cost of signing a veteran is one fewer lottery ticket. McConnell, like Robert Covington before him, has made Philadelphia's unending end-of-roster churn look savvy.

McConnell is averaging seven points, 4.7 rebounds, 5.2 assists, and 1.3 steals in 24.8 minutes, and advanced metrics grade him as one of the team's better players. He's a strong ball-handler and a smart passer, ranking in the top ten in playmaking usage, per data from Nylon Calculus. While McConnell doesn't score much off the drive and takes a well-below-average portion of his shots at the rim, he uses his forays inside to create for his teammates, and rates among the top ten in the league in pass percentage when driving. He basically never gets to the free-throw line—a whopping nine attempts in 29 games—but McConnell has killed teams when they drop under screens in the pick-and-roll, knocking down 50.8 percent of his mid-range jumpers and 35.7 percent of his outside looks. Aesthetically, his outside shot looks a little strange, but there's nothing ugly about 35.7 percent accuracy from three-point range.

McConnell's role stands to decrease now that Tony Wroten and Kendall Marshall are working their way back to health. The team misjudged Marshall's timeline recovering from a torn ACL, as Hinkie told ESPN's Zach Lowe, and while McConnell's a willing playmaker, he knows he's not yet as adept at setting up teammates as Marshall. Regarding the shooting struggles of teammate Nik Stauskus, for example, McConnell took ownership.

"I think some of it is me as a point guard and us as a team, we're putting him in bad spots sometimes," he said. "That's making him shoot shots he probably normally wouldn't take. And that can mess with a guy."

Head coach Brett Brown also likes the idea of closing with a more veteran point guard, who can help "walk the game down," limiting the team's panic in late-game scenarios.

Wroten and Marshall played in the same game for the first time last Wednesday; McConnell was limited to 17 minutes, his second-lowest total of the season. "It's good to have them back," he said. "We need them." That's gracious, and true, but McConnell's minutes could continue to decline in a crowded backcourt, even with the merciful end to the farcical Maybe Isaiah Canaan Is A Point Guard experiment. Wroten brings an ability to create for himself that nobody else on the Sixers has, and Marshall is the team's best passer and a solid outside shooting threat.

Still, McConnell figures to play a role as those two build up to a full workload, and he could be deployed as a change-of-pace guard even once the rotation solidifies. "I know if I was an opposing guard, it would be tough to go from guarding Tony, then to a guy like myself, and then Kendall. They don't really know what to expect," McConnell said. McConnell is the best defender of the three and creates easy offense the other way by corralling defensive rebounds or jumping passing lanes. He's a useful player, in short, and coaches find ways to use those.

Even if McConnell's role is reduced, in him the Sixers have turned a roster spot seemingly designated for intangibles into a very tangible asset. That asset is on a four-year contract at the league minimum with only $100,000 guaranteed, making him a discount rotation player or a potentially valuable trade chip—and, important for this organization, one with literally no downside if he were to get hurt or see his performance decline. Not that anyone should expect it to.

"I coached Matty Dellavedova for years with the Olympic stuff, and there's a lot of similarities as far as nobody gave him a chance. And just through resilience and toughness, he just never went away," Brown said Sunday. "He's grabbed an opportunity."

That same persistence may serve to slow, stall, or even prematurely end Hinkie's Process. Questions abound about ownership's stomach for more losing after they added the legendary Jerry Colangelo to the team's brain trust. The constant turnover is a nice way to turn up overlooked assets, but this is also a team made up of humans, and there are some very reasonable concerns that the churn might stunt the development of the long-term pieces, too. Brown admits that he has had to simplify things with players, particularly point guards, "revolving in and out."

Whether or not this particular aspect of the strategy is ultimately found wanting depends in large part on how McConnell and his teammates progress as NBA assets. That progress may not see McConnell become the type of all-around player a team can consider a foundational building block, but at his pay rate and with his background, any value McConnell provides, even a third-string piece, is found money.

"It's tough because you obviously want to prove that you have an all-around game," McConnell said. "But if you stick to what you're good at, what could go wrong?"

Regarding the end of his roster, Hinkie has been more focused on asking, "What could go right?" On a Philadelphia team that's still shot through with question marks, McConnell stands out as one of the answers.