One of the more bizarre stories this season has been Patrick McCaw‘s odyssey. The Warriors wanted to re-sign the reserve guard, but McCaw played hardball with them. He eventually signed a non-guaranteed offer sheet with the Cavaliers. His stay in Cleveland was brief, and he later signed for the remainder of the season with the Raptors.
With his current team set to play his former team in the Finals, McCaw spoke at length with Marc Spears of The Undefeated about why he chose that path.
Here are some of the highlights:
- McCaw wanted to have a bigger role. “I just wanted more. Not necessarily more playing time, but more opportunity for myself. I’m not discrediting the Warriors and what they chose to do. I just think being a young kid, you see all the younger guys competing and doing their thing and you feel like, ‘OK, I’m just that kid, or I could be doing exactly what he’s doing.’ ”
- His agents at the time, Marlon Harrison and Bill Duffy, urged him to accept Golden State’s two-year, $4 million offer but the restricted free agent but he wouldn’t budge. “Maybe I could just go back and finish, just go back for a year, see what happens, see where it took me,” McCaw said. “I just felt like once it got past preseason, I was just adamant about not going back. I was just stuck right there.”
- There was a perception that Cleveland did him a favor but signing him to the offer sheet that the Warriors didn’t match. But McCaw denies that. “I didn’t like how the media portrayed it, like we had something (else) lined up already,” he said. “Yeah, that wasn’t the case at all.”
- The personal reasons cited for McCaw’s absence during most of the Eastern Conference Finals was due to a family tragedy. His older brother, Jeffrey McCaw, died.
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