Jared McCain Plays Along After Fan Mistakes Him for Dylan Harper in Viral Sidewalk Moment
Jared McCain was walking down a sidewalk with his friend Nate when someone yelled at him from a car. The question was whether he was Dylan Harper. The answer set the internet on fire.
“Oh my god, yes! I’m Dylan!” McCain said, leaning all the way into it.
The Oklahoma City Thunder guard could have corrected the fan. He chose comedy instead. The clip ran by Overtime on Friday and racked up millions of views by Saturday morning.
To be fair to the fan, McCain and Harper look more alike than people want to admit. Both stand around 6-foot-3. Both have similar haircuts. Both have Filipino heritage they have talked about publicly. If you are catching either of them on a sidewalk through a car window, you can absolutely mix them up.
Why the Spurs Connection Makes This Funnier
The mix-up is funnier because the Thunder and the San Antonio Spurs have spent the last two playoffs trying to end each other. Harper is the Spurs’ young guard alongside Victor Wembanyama. McCain is now one of the key pieces Daryl Morey shipped to Oklahoma City in last fall’s trade. The rivalry between these teams is real.
The Western Conference semifinals between the Thunder and Spurs ended with the Thunder advancing in five and with Wembanyama jokingly accused by online fans of putting a hit out on McCain after a hard Game 5. Whatever the actual nature of the contact, the bad blood between OKC and San Antonio is going to define the West for the next half decade.
So a Spurs fan rolling down her window to ask McCain if he is Harper has a real ceiling for embarrassment. McCain decided to spare her. He also decided to make a tiny piece of internet content out of it.
This is on brand for McCain. The 76ers gave up on him because they thought he was too small to scale. He responded by going to the Thunder, fitting in seamlessly with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams, and turning into one of the better shooters in the league as a third option. He even refused to take public shots at Morey for trading him.
McCain is a public-relations natural. He has dance videos. He has TikTok crossover. He treats fan interactions like a comedy bit when he wants to. The Dylan Harper moment is going to live online for the rest of the summer.
Harper, for what it is worth, has not weighed in publicly. The Spurs are dealing with the bigger story of Wembanyama recovering from a Finals loss and possibly missing some of training camp. Harper is heading into a sophomore year that is supposed to define whether he is a star or a co-star in San Antonio’s long-term plan.
One of the things that makes the modern NBA fun is the proximity between players and fans. A guy walking down the sidewalk gets recognized but not really. He plays it for laughs. The fan ends up with a story she did not plan on telling. The clip goes everywhere. That is the league working the way it is supposed to work.
Dylan Harper is not Jared McCain. Jared McCain is, at least for one sidewalk encounter, Dylan Harper. The internet is going to need a minute.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
