Could Isaiah Collier Be Tyrese Maxey 2.0?
The only thing better than one Tyrese Maxey is two Tyrese Maxeys -- but does Collier really have that kind of late-first-round steal potential?
Though it seems ridiculous now, it makes sense why Tyrese Maxey fell to the Sixers in the 2020 NBA Draft.
At the time, Maxey was a tiny guard who shot terribly from three during his lone college season (29.2%, to be exact). It was a little shocking to see just how far he fell, given how great some of his college and high school tape looked, and the prestige he held as a recruit when he first arrived at Kentucky – but the NBA just isn’t eager to draft small guys, let alone small guys that might have shooting concerns. Flash forward four years, and Maxey is an All-Star, a Most Improved Player award winner, and beloved by the entire city of Philadelphia despite being a Dallas Cowboys fan. Fair to say the Sixers benefitted from the league’s oversight on that one.
Enter Isaiah Collier, a 6-foot-3 guard out of USC who Jonathan Wasserman has the Sixers taking with the 16th pick in his latest mock draft. Collier began the college season as a projected top-five pick, but has fallen significantly on boards following a disappointing season for a catastrophically bad USC team. He shot a pedestrian 33.8% from three, but still flashed a ton of promise with downhill driving burst and ability to create advantages for his teammates. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Obviously, they are not the same player, nor will they follow the same developmental arc. If Collier turns into a player as freakishly good as Maxey, that’s probably a 100th percentile outcome. But in a draft where there are no clear bets to be star players, Collier presents an upside at the 16th pick that is absolutely tantalizing.
Creating advantages and tossing great passes are the primary tools that Collier brings to the table. At nearly 205 pounds, Collier is a bulky ball handler, who combines strength and quick twitch speed to attack his defenders and get into the paint with ease. He’s at his best attacking when the defense isn’t fully set, as his raw burst is a lot for any point of attack defender to handle. When he collapses a defense, he has both the vision and the strength necessary to fling out passes in all directions, particularly with his dominant right hand, as he’s more than comfortable to flick a one-handed skip if it’s what the situation calls for.
Though he has some limitations that can prevent him from being the primary focal point of the offense full-time, he has the physical tools necessary to create easy shots for his teammates, which is an invaluable NBA skill.
Both Maxey and Collier played in less-than-ideal settings at the college level. At USC, Collier was not given great offensive schemes, nor did he have adequate spacing to operate with, and his bigs were not great targets either in the short roll or on lobs. Maxey, meanwhile, started alongside a guard who couldn’t shoot threes at all and two centers. Neither prospect was set up to look great at the college level (though it’s worth noting, Maxey’s team also had Immanuel Quickley and went 25-6, while 2024 USC finished near the bottom of the Pac-12).
When the college context is messy, looking at a prospect’s tape from the high school and AAU level can be helpful. It’s what gave many optimism regarding Maxey’s shot, as his pre-college film was littered with him making threes and displaying outlier touch on his trademark floaters. Collier’s high school film doesn’t exactly scream great shooter in the making (more on that in a bit), but it does reaffirm what he’s best at — passing the ball and creating advantages. Sure, it’s easier to throw crosscourt dimes and tight window lobs when facing non-NBA defenders, but watch the following plays, and it’s clear Collier has some special potential as a playmaker.
The biggest concern for Collier is how he’s going to score for himself at the next level. The shot looks awkward to say the least, and stylistically, it’s a complete 180 from Maxey’s. Collier set the ball above his head in his motion, and has very rigid footwork when setting up any of his jumpers off the bounce, whereas Maxey has always been a low-release point shooter, starting his shot from below his chin and generating power on the way up.
Collier saw a lot of under coverage in pick and rolls during his lone season at USC, with opponents daring him to pull-up from deep. His energy transfer from his live dribble to his shooting motion isn’t clean, from the awkward way he perches the ball, to the way his feet align in jagged directions as he rises up. It’s in juxtaposition to his catch-and-shoot motion from three, which looks a whole lot smoother. If Collier isn’t forced to dribble into his jumper, he’ll calmly 1-2 step into the pass thrown his way, and rise up in a pretty fluid motion for his jumper.
According to Synergy, Collier shot 17-for-46 (37.0%) on catch-and-shoot threes at USC this past season, a steep jump from the 10-for-35 (28.6%) mark he posted on off-the-dribble threes. It’s worth noting that he shot a good deal better off the dribble on two-point jumpers (13-for-33 per Synergy, 39.4%), which can project out to eventual off-the-dribble three-point shooting development. But by-and-large, Collier will only be a threat to hit threes in the NBA when shooting off the catch, as NBA opponents will almost certainly dare him to test his shaky pull-up game.
Even as poorly as he shot from three at Kentucky, Maxey still profiled as a slithery smooth bucket-getter that NBA defenses would have to respect when the ball was in his hands. That’s the primary difference between him and Collier as prospects, and why Maxey’s projection was always a bit cleaner, even with the obvious benefit of hindsight.
Taking just a cursory glance at their Synergy shooting profiles, it might appear that Collier projects better. He’s the one who got to the rim more often, finished better once there, and relied less on runners/floaters than prospect Maxey ever did.
However, watching the film reveals a different story. Maxey, even as a 19 year-old struggling to be efficient at the college level, displayed clear comfort operating in the short mid-range area. He was already adept at acrobatic finishes around the rim, and his ridiculous speed made him a constant threat to get in the paint. Defenses were backpedaling toward the basket to prevent him from taking layups, and Maxey was more than happy to beat them with his patented odd-angle floaters.
Compare that to the way Collier operates on his floaters. His look less like a counter he is throwing at defenses and more like a last-ditch effort when all of his preferred options have been taken away. It’s not much of a scientific description, but whereas Maxey looked comfortable launching these high-difficulty shots, Collier almost appears as though he’s just pushing the ball toward the rim and hoping that it goes in.
Combine that with some other shooting indicators leaning Maxey’s way (he shot 83.3% on college free throws, while Collier only made 67.3% this past season), and it’s clear how Maxey projected to be the more translatable off-the-dribble scorer.
Additionally, because Maxey’s scoring translated, it made the rest of his development all that much easier. He could get on the court at a young age because Doc Rivers could trust him to get some valuable buckets and garner the respect of his defenders. Maxey couldn’t do much else but score when he first arrived in Philadelphia, but because that scoring earned him opportunities, he could get on the court and grow in all other areas, be it his passing, his defense, his off-ball three-point shooting — all of it. Maxey at just 20 year -old hit the baseline threshold of self-creation and scoring, and that allowed him to become the player he is today.
Collier, meanwhile, might not be an easy fit. On paper, he’s best with the ball in his hands, driving relentlessly and creating open looks for others. But how is he going to playmake if defenses simply dare him to score off-the-dribble? It’s great that he can make all those passes, but there won’t be any passes to make if off-ball defenders stay glued to their assignments and dare Collier to finish the play himself.
This is where it becomes a question of how Collier can get to and finish at the rim in the NBA despite defenses knowing that’s always his preferred way to score. Both in high school and in college, Collier won with his strength, as thinner guards have routinely bounced off him as he plows his way to the bucket. When he’s at his best, his strength-based self-creation looks fantastic. He’s great at using his left shoulder to discard defenders, and understands his own finishing craft well enough to slow down when he approaches the rim so that he’s not flying in there out of control.
Collier is also a big fan of elongated spin moves, and a powerful up-and-under step through that’s probably the closest thing he has to a trademark play.
The strength-based finishing of Collier is born out of skill, but also somewhat out of necessity. Collier has a very compact build, with his wingspan measuring in at a mere 6-foot-4.75 inches, barely putting him across the height-to-wingspan mendoza line. Whereas Maxey is built like a condor with his near 6-foot-9 wingspan, Collier is a bowling ball with very little reach.
This shows up in a lot of his worst at-rim finishes, where Collier can’t bend and contort around defenders who are able to withstand an initial bump from him. He’s almost exclusively a right-hand finisher, as he’ll smoke almost all lefty attempts he goes for in traffic. His shot gets blocked a lot, with his middling vertical explosion giving opposing bigs easy opportunities to attack the ball. Any time he goes for an up-and-around finish mid-air, he’ll miss it by just a hair, as his lack of length prevents from getting the shot off at the exact angle he was intending.
Again, worth noting that Synergy had Collier finishing 96 of his 157 at-rim attempts this past season. His good plays were still more common than his bad ones. It’s just that on his missed attempts, you can see precisely what he might struggle with in the NBA. This is a guy who wins with strength, speed, and craft, but can be swallowed up by the plug-length athletes permeating the league, and lacks off-the-dribble shooting as a countermeasure.
Collier is a different prospect than Maxey was coming out of Kentucky four years ago, even if some similarities hold true. When Maxey was taken at No. 21, Sixers fans everywhere rejoiced: Even for as far as he’d fallen in the pre-draft process, it still wasn’t expected that he’d be on the board by that point. If Collier goes to the Sixers at No. 16, there will certainly be some happy viewers, but not everyone will be ready to hop on the train. Collier has never had the electric scoring juice that Maxey’s always shown, the USC team as a whole was just a gigantic bummer, and most importantly, the Sixers are operating from a drastically different standpoint than they were four years ago.
In 2020, the team was coming off one of the most dismal seasons possible, saddled with the albatross contracts of both Tobias Harris and Al Horford. The Sixers had been swept in the first round in embarrassing fashion by the Celtics, Joel Embiid had just posted his worst season to date, and the roster was decrepit for rising talent. Taking a swing on a young guard with the hope that he’d develop into a star felt like water in the desert. Contrast that with there the team finds itself in 2024 — having a superstar duo whose clock is ticking with Embiid only growing older, and a massive cap space plan meant to completely reform the team into an all-out contender. There’s no debate: the goal is to win now, and drafting a sub-20 year-old point guard with shooting concerns doesn’t scream “he can help us in year one.”
Still, the upside Collier brings should he fall to 16 is hard to pass on. He’s one of the best playmakers in the entire class, bar none, and if he hits, the Sixers suddenly have one of the most promising young backcourts in the entire association. Not to mention, scaling him down from a primary role to a tertiary one alongside Maxey and Embiid could work wonders for Collier himself. He won’t have to worry about creating buckets for himself off the bounce if he spends most of his time attacking closeouts created by Philly’s superstars, either by nailing catch-and-shoot threes, or by driving the closeouts and making great passes against a collapsed defense. Having a role player who can comfortably handle the ball is a luxury that’s rarely been afforded to the Sixers during the Embiid era. Collier can attack tilted defenses with a refreshing strength and verve that can be sorely missed when playing older three-and-D role players.
It’s probably impossible for a player to be exactly like Maxey, who developed about as well as anyone possibly could have hoped for. But there are lessons to be learned from Maxey that can be applied to Collier, such as betting on the physically gifted guard who “underachieved” in less than ideal circumstances.
Collier is not exactly Maxey 2.0. But he is a guard with massive upside who could turn out to be one of the best players in the entire 2024 draft class, and that’s a player worth taking for the Sixers with the 16th overall pick.
Daniel Olinger is a writer for the Rights To Ricky Sanchez, and author of “The Danny” column, even though he refuses to be called that in person. He can be followed on X @dan_olinger.
“The Danny” is brought to you by the Official Realtor Of The Process, Adam Ksebe.
Those floater and layup misses look rather pedestrian- little touch-insufficient burst. I'll play Ricky Counsel IV over that guy.