We've Never Really Had Anything Like Tyrese Maxey Before
And we don't even really know how good he could still get.
Andrew Unterberger is a famous writer who invented the nickname 'Sauce Castillo' and is now writing for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the 'If Not, Pick Will Convey As Two Second-Rounders' section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.
Andrew's writing is brought to you by Kinetic Skateboarding! Not only the Ricky's approved skate shop, but the best place to get Chucks, Vans, any apparel. Use code "DAVESILVER" for 9.1% off your order.
You didn't really think we were going to lose on the final night of #SixersJanuary, did you? No, with Wanda Sykes in the stands and Joel Embiid in the locker room, the Sixers closed their Home Month with perhaps the greatest of their surprising number of statement wins this season (I might still give the edge to the W in Miami, just 'cuz Heat), taking down the always troublesome Memphis Grizzlies while our franchise player took a load off. The number of Sixers who carried that weight in our MVP frontrunner's absence was stunning -- basically everyone except Seth Curry, and even Seth showed up fashionably late in the fourth -- but it was only one boy's Bar Mitzvah tonight, and that was Tyrese Maxey.
Tyrese has already had a number of signature games for his short career: The 39-point COVID game against Denver last year, the back-to-back 30-plus point showings against Milwaukee and Toronto without Joel in November, the big first quarter against the Hawks in Game Six of the playoffs. But last night was something different: Maxey staring down a marquee matchup against the only team hotter than the Sixers since the holidays, and the biggest rising star at his position in the whole Association, and not only balling the fuck out but making the plays down the stretch on both sides to actually win the game, and then basically stage diving into the WFC pit. It was the kind of game you remember in a player's career, in a career that seems increasingly likely to be unforgettable.
It's still hard to believe that we actually have a player like this.
A player like what? Well, a player like the Grizzlies have with Desmond Bane: a guy who arrives late-ish on draft night with impressive pedigree but a whole lot of "if he can only..." and "as long as he doesn't..." type qualifiers, but sheds those within a couple of years and develops faster than you could have ever hoped for, until his upward trajectory ends up changing the entire arc of his team's projected future. I watched him light up the Sixers last night to the tune of 34 points on 21 shots -- in his own way as mystifying and terrifying as the truly spectral Ja Morant -- and I couldn't help comment to myself: "Goddamn it, why don't the Sixers ever get a guy like this?" Then I remember: Hey, we actually did.
Yes, although I'd never give SixersAdam the satisfaction of saying his name, the guy with the hair who hit the three in OKC ended up giving Sixers fans a gift we haven't gotten since Jrue Holiday, maybe ever: a prospect who exceeds expectations so dramatically so quickly that you forget what his ceiling was supposed to be in the first place. Forget that he's a lead guard (?) who can get to the rim (??) and maybe even also shoot decently (!!!!) -- even if he was so Process Sixers that he had you Googling fake-sounding medical conditions to explain his suddenly wonky jumper, this would still feel like something we'd never felt before. We're just a year and a half into his career, and there's already barely any base-level "If he can only..."s or "As long as he doesn't..."s left with him.
I went into this season thinking we were due for much frustration with Tyrese: His Summer League hype and Process Trusters' general infatuation with him seemed destined to lead to heartbreak as he was moved to starting point for the first time and challenged to develop his game beyond just driving (or floating) to the hoop with abandon. But such frustration was slight to start the year and has all but dissipated by now, as he increasingly takes the shots he should take, rises to the defensive challenges presented him, and adjusts his game to give the Sixers the balance that they need for when he's just a planet on the roster and not the sun at the center. He's got a lot to learn still, but he's also basically already there. There's only one other Sixer if the last 20 years you could really say that about, and he was taken 18 spots higher in the draft (and we still had to wait two extra years for said career to start).
And we don't even really know how good he could still get. Late last year, after the post-COVID game excitement had faded and Maxey had started to at least brush up against the rookie wall, on The Ricky, Mike brought up Kyle Lowry as a potential best-case scenario long-term comp for him -- one that felt generous, if not totally implausible. Now, it's fair to wonder if that wasn't dreaming big enough. It took Lowry three teams and basically half his career to be as consistently dynamic on offense as Maxey already is, and while Lowry has the defense and intangibles that a second-year player couldn't hope to entirely possess, he's already getting closer than should be possible, particularly on defense: His tenacity has been an absolute game-changer on that end the past few months, and while his four blocks on Monday night might be an outlier, they seem like evidence of a player who's going to produce many such outlying stat lines over the course of his career. It's so rare to see a player improve this much on the big things and the little things all at once, and makes you think a lot more of both is still to come.
Is he straight-up untradeable at this point? Honestly, before last night I would've still said conclusively no: As much as Maxey is finding his role in Embiid's orbit, and improving his distributing and his ability (and willingness) to make open threes, we need so much from our top perimeter option -- and we need it so soon, with any Embiid-based future by its nature somewhat unsteady and uncertain -- that I just thought we might not get him up to speed in time for him to be the difference-maker we need. I still think all of that, but now I wonder if he's good enough that it just doesn't matter. He's improved so much so quickly, both as an individual attacker and as a complementary player to Joel, that getting rid of him so early in his journey before we see what else he picks up along the way feels... irresponsible. This isn't holding onto Markelle Futlz when Kawhi Leonard is available in the blind hope that he gets his body and his shit together soon and gives you what you always wanted from him; we've already seen plenty of evidence that he's capable of improving enough to grow into the player we need him to be.
Maybe you go the other way with it, really. Daryl Morey talked about how Joel's MVP campaign has changed his calculations about where the Sixers are and what they still not to be able to do to truly compete for a championship this year; I wonder if Maxey's evolution has him thinking similarly. Maybe Maxey being this good this quickly means you have that much more reason to go for it right away -- especially if Tobias' progression to the mean after a brutally underwhelming start to the season persists. Maybe it means that even if Morey doesn't end up trading Simmons this season, he still makes moves with the Sixers' sparer parts and draft capital to get the roster reinforcements that can take some pressure off Joel, while also demonstrating to him they're not just looking at his second-straight God Mode season as a competitive write-off. Or maybe Maxey has become so tantalizing to other teams that the may offer you their readymade stars for packages headlined by him and not Simmons.
If the latter ends up being true, Morey & Co. may have tough choices to make that could end up potentially swinging the fate of the franchise. But ultimately, it's still the good kind of problem to have, and one we could never have imagined developing so quickly, just a year after we were debating if it was worth asking the nowhere-bound Raptors to lend us half a season of Kyle Lowry himself's twilight in exchange for all of Maxey's future. For a franchise whose recent past has been so defined by major draft whiffs -- a list which, incredibly enough given how his career started, now arguably also has to make room for Ben Simmons -- to hit one into the upper deck on a low-and-away pitch like this makes for a truly singular new high. No matter what happens at the trade deadline, him growing from a boy to a man, winning us tough games and proving there's no rival guard too hot for him to hang with has played the second-largest part in making this regular season special for Process Trusters. Today, we are all fountain pens.