Don't Lose Sight of How Great Tyrese Maxey Has Been
His numbers aren't eye-popping, and neither is the Sixers' record with him leading the way -- but our beautiful boy has kept the team afloat, and turned another very important corner as a player.
We've already had so many different types of dispiriting Sixers seasons over the decade-plus of the Process Era, but this year is somehow a new one. We've never had a regular season start so promisingly and slip away this gradually and frustratingly, with the best version of this team seemingly still so close and yet truthfully so profoundly far away. Can the team get healthy in time for the postseason? Will it be able to round back into peak form in time even if it does? And with the increasingly tough playoff road we're scheduled for as we slide further and further in the standings, how long can even the ideal incarnation of this team survive in the postseason? It's getting to the point -- if it's not there already -- where the hole we've fallen in this year is so deep that it's near-impossible to envision a way out of it.
It's bleak big-picture times, for sure. That's why it's important that we take time to celebrate the one unequivocally good thing we've gotten out of it: the continued growth, emergence and all-around excellence of Tyrese Maxey.
It might not necessarily feel in a visceral sense that this has been a period to really celebrate for Tyrese. His numbers across the 21 games he's played since Joel Embiid went down in Golden State are good, but not jump-off-the-page good (at least by his recent standards): He's averaging 26 points, five assists, four rebounds, two turnovers and a steal, on 45/39/88% shooting splits -- all of which is almost entirely in line with his averages for the whole season. What's more, the team has gone just 9-12 in those 21 games, as they've slid from fifth to eighth in the East standings. It seems like Tyrese has overseen the version of this team that has generally proven to be not good enough.
And that's true -- the Sixers without Joel Embiid were never going to be good enough. But for a while, it looked like the Sixers without Joel Embiid were going to be straight-up bad, losing six straight games at home, seeming truly hopeless against good teams and at best a coin toss against other subpar teams. Maxey has now stabilized the Sixers to the point where they can once again regularly take care of business against the dregs of the league, and can at least be reliably competitive against the real teams. They've played .500 ball for the month of March with Maxey in the lineup (5-5), and are at least hanging in the race for the sixth seed, at a game-and-a-half back of the Pacers.
Again, not exactly a case for Maxey to belatedly enter the MVP discussion. Dragging the Sixers to break-even status should be the bare minimum for an All-Star player, which Tyrese was officially minted as during in the middle of this Jo-less stretch. But consider the circumstances: Do you know how many of Maxey's last 16 games have come against non-playoff teams? Two, both against Charlotte. Aside from that, it's been a whole lot of games against the East's top four (seven total), and a whole lot of road games against West teams scrapping for seeding (five total), with a concussed Tyrese even missing out on a potential oasis of back-to-back games against the injury-wracked Nets and Grizzlies. It's been a grind every single night for Delco's No. 1 son, constantly leading his undermanned team in uphill battles against the league's best and hungriest.
And you know what he's done every single night? He's fucking produced. He's taken the load of being the team's unquestioned No. 1 option and he's scored at least 20 points in 15 of his last 17 games. He's learning pacing -- when the team needs him to set the tone early, he can go off for 17 in the first quarter against Dallas or 21 against Sacramento, and when the team needs him to save his energy for late, he can let Tobias keep rolling like he did early against the Clippers on Sunday, and score 19 of his own 24 points in the second half. He's defending his ass off, he's (slowly) developing his mid-range game, he's getting to the line when he can and (usually) not losing his mind when he can't.
A lot of the time, it hasn't been enough. Maxey hasn't gotten a ton of help: scoring assistance ostensibly should be coming from Tobias Harris and Buddy Hield, but they've about as reliable right now as an NBA free agency reporter with only 1500 Twitter followers, and Tobi has missed time -- as have Nico Batum and Kyle Lowry -- while DeAnthony Melton has barely played and Robert Covington may have run off to join the circus. Somehow Kelly Oubre Jr. has been by far Maxey's most consistent teammate in terms of both production and availability, and even he's out this week with shoulder soreness. Tyrese is a star but he's not a superstar; he can't lead the team to greatness on his own yet. What he can do now is be the first option on a half-decent team, a team that can string together wins against the Heat, Clippers, Mavericks and Cavs (twice) and at least fake their way through four quarters against the true contenders. For a 23-year-old who was a third option not that long ago and suddenly finds himself the lone offensive engine for a team perpetually in desperation mode, that's a pretty impressive development.
It's a shame -- for quite a lot of reasons, actually! -- that we don't have great reason to think right now that the Sixers will be whole again in time to really turn this season around, because it'd be great to look at this Maxey stretch as a blessing in disguise. After all, our baby boy is learning to walk like a man when it matters most, getting all kinds of invaluable lead singer experience that he'd never be able to get while serving as one of Joel's Vandellas. One of our biggest fears going into the season, and even in the first couple months as he was graduating to All-Star status, was about if Tyrese would be able to respond to the increased defensive pressure and overall scrutiny that the postseason invariably confronts young players with -- especially since early in the season, smothering defensive teams like Boston and Miami were able to knock him off his axis a little. Now, he's regularly dealing with traps near half court and figuring out how to both keep the offense moving and still get his when it matters. You'd have to think the team's playoff ceiling would've been even higher as a result.
We might not get to find out about that this season. But even if we don't, the progress that Maxey has made in this stretch will matter. He's still on his rookie contract and he's already basically where Bradley Beal was in Year Seven. It makes you excited for how much room he still has to grow, when those passes out of the traps become second nature, when that creaky midrange game gets fully weaponized, when that killer instinct on the stepback three turns truly merciless, when -- maybe -- the refs start to show him just a liiiiiiittle bit more love with the whistle. Spike wrote recently about why it's dumb to consider trading Joel Embiid -- ain't wrong there, Boss -- and said that Tyrese Maxey would never turn into the top five player that Joel currently is. Probably not, but if this is what Maxey is already, could he be a top 15 player at his peak? Maybe a Damian Lillard-type fixture around the fringes of the top 10? Could there maybe even be the teeniest tiniest hint of vaguely Steph Curry-like upside?
It's a dream, but Tyrese Maxey is giving us reason to dream it. And in the midst of what's looking a whole lot like a lost season, especially if Joel Embiid doesn't return soon to once again serve as our compass, that's something we really gotta remember to be grateful for.
Andrew Unterberger writes 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.
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