Tyrese Maxey is set to have a huge first season under Nick Nurse. The Philadelphia 76ers' young guard has gotten better each season and now will be paired with one of the more innovative head coaches in basketball. The Sixers hired Nurse mostly because they like his vision for building around Joel Embiid but his ideas for Maxey are similarly promising.

Nurse has big plans for Maxey, as he explained during his introductory press conference that he wants to make Maxey more of a creator. Continuing his development is the best way for the team to improve internally, an objective made especially important on a team with few other young players.

As the Sixers participate in the NBA 2K24 Summer League in Las Vegas, Maxey hosted a live episode of his podcast “Maxey on the Mic” with Nurse. In a discussion that featured topics such as cheesesteak recommendations in Philly, why Nurse wears glasses only during games and how they each look to relate to the Philly crowd, Nurse also dropped some insight into his coaching strategy that has the young guard extra excited for the season to begin.

One tactic that Maxey sounded very intrigued by was how Nurse assesses players in specific areas of the game. He said that he likes having his teams stay aggressive on both sides of the ball and that setting that type of tone starts in practice. In specific areas that reflect that aggression, Nurse said he will keep tabs on how players do and will be held accountable if needed.

“Like, I'll say, ‘Hey, Tyrese, I want you to pressure the ball tonight.’ And you’re gonna have a ball-pressure score the next day,” the Sixers coach said. “You’re gonna have a score — how many times out of 10 you did it well or how many times out of 18 or whatever the case may be, and you’ll start taking pride in that.”

Maxey, indeed, has already stated taking pride in it. He said that it's a “tool of motivation” and that he already has his sights set on the team's high score. That was only an example but it is something Nurse has practiced in Summer League, as the summer Sixers have aggressively guarded the ball-handler throughout much of their games.

Nurse's ability to mix up his tactics made him an appealing coaching candidate. The Sixers got stale under Doc Rivers far too frequently, a partial reason why they failed to finish the job against the Boston Celtics in last year’s postseason. For Maxey, Nurse's creativity is something that really stands out.

“One thing I really thought about was how you say you try new things and you test them out. Like, that’s crazy. I’ve never had a coach that actually tests them out in the games,” Maxey said. “And I've seen you test them out against us in the game. Like a regular season game, it works and then you bring it back in the playoffs. The way that you adjust, the way that you come to those conclusions, I'm pretty sure you probably have a lot of late nights.”

The Sixers got to see plenty of Nurse over his five years as the head coach of the Toronto Raptors, matching up twice in the postseason in addition to four matchups in the regular season (three in the shortened seasons). His familiarity with the team made him somewhat of a villain to Philly. But now, he is using his expertise in game-planning against Embiid and the Sixers to help unlock them.

Nurse said that he wants the Sixers offense to be “more unpredictable” and feature more mismatch hunting. The easiest route to scoring is the one Nurse wants Philly to take, which will require guys getting their touches outside of Embiid. It will also require Embiid to embrace a more holistic approach on offense. His comments about the importance of the team around him following Philly’s season-ending loss suggest that he is willing to.

The specifics of the Sixers' style of play have yet to be ironed out with the offseason still ongoing and the James Harden situation still unresolved. But one thing is for sure about Nick Nurse: he will exhaust every option to find a way to make it work.