Daryl Morey knows Joel Embiid and James Harden will be at the core of their title aspirations for the 2022-23 season, but there is one player he believes will be the “key” for them to win it all: Tyrese Maxey.

Maxey was thrown into the spotlight as the Sixers' main point guard amid the Ben Simmons drama last campaign, and to the delight of everyone, he exceeded expectations and established himself as a true rising star in the league.

With the Sixers looking to take advantage of the Embiid-Harden duo, however, Morey admits Maxey's play will be one of the biggest, if not the most important factor for them to succeed.

“He’s key to our season. Obviously the new players on the team I think are two-way players and are going to set the stage, but winning the title really comes down to your best players. And probably the key things are we need Joel to yet again give us an MVP-level performance; we need James to be just himself — we don’t even need five years ago James, we need the guy we saw last year for most of the games; but the biggest inflection point is probably we need Maxey to take another step forward,” Morey said of Maxey on The Takeoff with John Clark podcast, via NBC Sports.

Fortunately for the Sixers faithful, Daryl Morey is more that confident that Tyrese Maxey could become the player he envisions him to be. The Sixers president understands it's a big ask to demand another big leap from Maxey, but if there's anyone who can do it, it's him.

“He’s putting the work in. Look, it’s really hard. His rookie year was way ahead of schedule. His second year was way, way ahead of schedule. And to ask him to do another leap forward is asking a lot, but we do need it. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he does it given how much time he puts in,” Morey added.

It remains to be seen if Maxey can live up to this huge praise and challenge from Morey this 2022-23, but based on what we've seen from Maxey last year, are we really going to doubt him?