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You Can’t Stop This Version of Tyrese Maxey, You Can Only Hope to Contain Him
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The Sixers defeated the Wizards in overtime on Tuesday night to improve to 4-0 on the season. They had to dig deep for this one after deciding that defense was optional on the second night of a home/road back-to-back, but they got the job done with 39 points and 10 assists from Tyrese Maxey and an efficient 25/7/5 in 23 Joel Embiid minutes. Quentin Grimes pitched in 23 off the bench as the Sixers once again shot better than 40% from three.
Maxey is currently the NBA’s leading scorer with 37.5 points per game. He’s posted the following individual stats through the early portion of the schedule:
- 45.5 field goal percentage
- 25.3 field goal attempts per game
- 47.3% from three
- 87% on 11.5 free throw attempts a night
- 8.3 assists per
- 3.8 rebounds per
- 4.13 assist to turnover ratio
- 31% usage rate
- .619 true shooting %
- .545 effective field goal %
Small sample size, but pretty much everything is a career high. He’s scoring 36% of his points from three while shooting 47.3% from beyond the arc, which is quite the model of efficiency. Sustainable? No, but the analytics guys would love the shot plot he posted in Washington, in which 23 of his 25 attempts came from either inside the paint or from the high wing areas on either side:
Even when Maxey doesn’t get all the way to the rim, he’s got the floater in his arsenal, which really is an effective shot for him. He’s pretty crafty at sliding by bigs, and/or drawing contact, but he can also go right up over them with that shot from 6-8 feet to mix up his looks.
More than anything, he just seems to be making the right decisions, and he’s assertive with those decisions, whether it’s using screens properly and firing from deep, or identifying when and where to attack. We’re at the point where he can’t totally be contained, only slowed down, which is tremendous, obviously. It’ll be cool seeing him wear the black uniform that Allen Iverson wore. He’s certainly worthy of the throwback garb donning.
It seems like this Sixers team is annoyed with the way that last season went. You can tell based on the level of intensity and effort that’s been shown through four games so far. They did a lot of losing last year, with a depleted lineup, and they hated it. Some guys sat for weeks and months. You get the sense that they stewed on it all summer long and now they’ve finally got a chance to show everyone that 2024-2025 was a total fluke. An aberration. This is the version of the Sixers you were supposed to see, and, oh yeah, they get Paul George back at some point.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com