Tyrese Maxey Is The NBA’s 2023-24 Most Improved Player

The NBA is in the middle of the first round of the playoffs, which means that we’ve reached the part of the calendar where individual excellence gets celebrated, too. On Tuesday night, the league handed out its first award for the 2023-24 season, as the TNT crew handed out George Mikan trophy to its Most Improved Player.

This year, the honor went to Philadelphia 76ers guard Tyrese Maxey, who is in the midst of a breakout campaign that previously saw him make it to the All-Star Game for the first time in his young career.

Maxey, the No. 21 overall pick in the 2020 NBA Draft, has come up big for the Sixers over and over again this season, as the team saw him take on a bigger role in the aftermath of the James Harden trade to the Los Angeles Clippers. His role got even bigger midway through the year when Joel Embiid suffered a knee injury, and whenever he was asked to deliver, he did. On the year, Maxey put up career-best numbers across the board, going for 25.9 points, 6.2 assists, 3.7 rebounds, and a steal in 37.5 minutes per game.

Maxey beat out Chciago Bulls guard Coby White and Houston Rockets big man Alperen Sengun to win the award. The voting results show that Maxey narrowly beat out White, while Sengun came in a distant third.

Now that he has officially been named the MIP, Maxey can focus on Thursday night, when the Sixers will host the New York Knicks for Game 3 of their first round series.