The Philadelphia 76ers have made many terrible transactions during my lifetime as a fan. (Some good ones, as well. I am old and eventually things pile up on both sides of the ledger.)

I count trading Jared McCain to the Oklahoma City Thunder as one of the really bad ones. When the deal went down, it seemed like such an own goal by the organization. Here you had a talented 22-year-old at the nadir of his value coming off a pair of injuries, beloved by his teammates and universally lauded for his work ethic, and you’re shipping him off for draft picks which, in all likelihood, won’t bring back a player of his caliber.

People argued for the trade (they were wrong), because you can’t even get everyone to agree that the sky is blue anymore, but eventually, things kind of got back to normal. We all have lives and there were still games to watch and the Sixers miraculously beat the Boston Celtics and then got curbstomped by the New York Knicks and I was ready for the offseason with one eye on the draft and some hope about a Tyrese Maxey-VJ Edgecombe backcourt in the future. I would love to never think about the Jared McCain trade and how dumb it was ever again, unless I’m reading some sort of “worst moves of the Daryl Morey era” article once every couple of years.

Except…I can’t.

Because Jared McCain plays for the Oklahoma City Thunder, who are objectively the best team in the league, and currently leading the San Antonio Spurs in the Western Conference Finals. So two or three times per week, my timeline is flooded with stats about McCain scoring 24 points, going toe to toe with Victor Wembanyama at the basket, and quotes from Thunder teammates and coaches (who already won a championship last summer!) glowing about what a tremendous competitor and human being McCain is. It’s tortuous. It’s like if I had a huge scab, but right before it could finish completely healing the wound, somebody rips it off again and pours rubbing alcohol over the entire area. And this happens every couple of days.

If McCain had been traded to somewhere like Sacramento, this wouldn’t be an issue. He probably would have had a couple 25-point games, and people would have said it was a dumb trade, while others said to move on and called them empty stats on a bad team. Ultimately, it wouldn’t have mattered too much and it would have been done in April and we wouldn’t have needed to think too much about it. Instead, McCain was sent to the Thunder (which, again, maybe if the best team in the league wants your guy, you shouldn’t trade him). So we’re probably going to have to watch him through May and often June for the next few years.

Right now, I can’t even watch what is an amazing playoff series for a neutral observer without Mike Tirico asking how people in South Philadelphia are doing (not great, Mike!). And the arguments that Jared couldn’t live up to the physicality of the playoffs and would be played off the floor because the postseason exploits every weakness look increasingly ridiculous by the day. He’ll probably get to hoist the trophy during a parade in Oklahoma City next month and it will be a flashing billboard reading, “the Sixers will never win a title in your lifetime because they keep making boneheaded moves like trading Jared McCain.”

Some of you are probably reading this and nodding along in agreement. I imagine there are others saying, “Who cares? He hasn’t been a Sixer for three months, why are we still talking about this?” For the record, I would love to not talk about it, because that would mean this particular organizational failure wasn’t constantly being thrown back in my face. But with as good as the Oklahoma City Thunder are and project to be for the foreseeable future, it’s probably going to be a long time before Jared McCain isn’t “the one who got away”.