The Philadelphia 76ers were floundering. James Harden had been ejected late in the third quarter. Facing incessant double-teams, MVP frontrunner Joel Embiid looked battered, frustrated, and less sharp than normal. Their once-explosive offense was stalling and ground to a dull halt. They’d scored 31 points over the prior 21 minutes and trailed the Brooklyn Nets, 92-89, with just over three minutes remaining in the final frame.
As Tyrese Maxey isolated Cameron Johnson on the left wing, the shot clock dwindled below 10. Philly’s 22-year-old emotive trackstar hesitated, drove, ducked his right shoulder under Johnson, stopped short of Dorian Finney-Smith’s oncoming rotation, and lofted in a runner off the back rim.
That bucket ignited 10 straight points for Maxey, who scored a team-high 25 in Philadelphia’s grimy, 102-97 victory to assert a commanding 3-0 lead in the first round against their Atlantic Division foe. Three days earlier, Maxey poured in a game-high 33 points on 13-for-23 shooting to spearhead a 96-84 win. Despite a quiet Game 1 (13 points, 3-for-8 shooting), the third-year guard is averaging 23.7 points on 69.5 percent true shooting in this series. Over his last two playoff runs combined (15 games), he’s averaging 21.3 points on 62.7 percent true shooting.
The Sixers selected Maxey 21st overall in the 2020 NBA Draft using the pick they received in the deal that sent Markelle Fultz to the Orlando Magic. When Philadelphia traded up for and drafted Fultz in 2017, it pictured him as the skeleton key third star alongside Embiid and Ben Simmons: a pick-and-roll maestro who could boogie off the dribble and ease the burdens of its towering stars. Years later, he indirectly yielded his former team Maxey, their platonic third star alongside Embiid and Harden, who was acquired in a trade centered around Simmons.
The harmony of his fit is constantly exhibited, but perhaps no more than the past two games, when he’s tallied 58 points on 40 shots. With the Nets sending hard doubles toward Embiid on nearly every touch, the NBA scoring champion is not shouldering the same load as he did in the regular season. He’s averaging 13 fewer points with a usage rate that’s seven points lower. Somebody has to replace that volume.
Harden backpacked grander responsibilities in Game 1 (23 points, 21 shots) and Game 3 (21 points, 15 shots in 29 minutes) before his ejection. Tobias Harris (18.7 points, 65.5 percent true shooting) has emerged as an efficient, versatile release valve.
Maxey is ever-present the last two games to pierce a hectic, rangy Nets defense. The former Kentucky Wildcat is not just a jackpot shooter because of his numbers (41.3 percent from deep for his career). He launches on the move, relocates to openings, and absolutely torches poor closeouts, which Brooklyn has tossed his way as it scrambles on the backside of Embiid doubles. Embiid and Harden are methodical, slowly operating scorers. Maxey is a strike of lightning whose immediacy is a jarring shift of tempo for defenses. That dichotomy induces whiplash.
Unlike some 6’1 guards, simply exiling him off the arc is not a solution to extinguish his flame. The Toronto Raptors struggled with this in last year’s first round. The Nets are experiencing the same dilemma. Both teams prioritized slowing the man in the middle, and Maxey’s prolific showings are not a coincidence. They are a direct effect of that gambit. According to PBPStats, Maxey touts an effective field goal percentage of 92.5 on assisted field goal attempts in the playoffs. (The league average is 58.2 percent.) Blending rainbow jumpers and intrepid, acrobatic forays, he is the exemplary moon to orbit around Embiid’s sun.
With Harden watching from the locker room and Embiid’s creation stymied by Brooklyn’s feisty, brazen defense, the Sixers needed their young guard to be the primary initiator down the stretch. Behind a split-leg floater and two pull-up triples, he slid into that role gracefully, as he’s often done throughout the year. Over the final 4:50, they recorded three buckets in the half-court. Maxey authored all of them.
According to PBPStats, he’s generated an effective field goal percentage of 52.1 on self-created jumpers in the regular season and 51.8 in the playoffs, both of which are more than two points above the NBA average. He’s also splashed home 38.6 percent of his off-the-bounce long balls this season. His handle and passing limitations hinder his capacity to be a full-time on-ball explorer at the moment, but this context doesn’t demand that. He’s qualified to scale up in waves. A gigantic, paramount wave arrived Thursday night and Maxey flashed his credentials.
Part of the enthusiasm for Maxey doesn’t center solely on his current exploits. He is a turbo-charged, malleable off-ball scorer and budding on-ball scorer who remains years away from his prime. Eventually, the hope (maybe even the belief) is that these on-ball flurries won’t be shooting stars that generally pop up when Embiid and/or Harden are absent. They’ll be the foundation of his offensive acumen.
The Sixers certainly imagine it. They know Harden and Embiid will not be around forever — or at least not these calibers of stars forever. They understand the difference in timelines when their pillars are 22, 29, and 33 years old. Maxey’s comfort balancing those somewhat discordant timelines punctuates his brilliance.
Late first-round picks are not supposed to shine this brightly or this rapidly. Maxey was drafted fewer than 2.5 years ago and is in his second campaign as a starter. His 25-point outbursts, of which he now owns five over his past 15 playoff appearances, should not be the expectation every third postseason game. The dude’s dotting crunch-time, pull-up threes in the playoffs while sharing the floor with scoring royalty.
Adapting to varying roles so seamlessly at his age should be an outlier. But it’s not. All of this is woven into the expectations for who he is, not who he’ll become, and justifiably so; these expectations are borne from his résumé. He is a tremendous player who amplifies the Sixers’ stars, nonchalantly toggles across duties, and is arguably the foremost reason they’re perched atop a 3-0 lead in this first-round duel with the Nets.