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PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia 76ers have expected great things from Tyrese Maxey — and they have gotten just that. But they still want him to keep improving.
Maxey tallied 22 points and 10 assists, which matched his career-high, as the Sixers won their fourth straight game against the Phoenix Suns. However, he wasn’t very good in the first half, scoring inefficiently and struggling to find good looks.
Nick Nurse played the same postgame tune he usually does: insisting that Maxey has room to be even more aggressive. It's a testament to Maxey's talent that his second-half surge wasn’t seen as enough by his coach. To his credit, Maxey said that’s what he did to seal the deal for Philly.
“Um, the ball went through the net,” Maxey joked when asked what clicked for him in the second half. “I think I was trying to be aggressive, though, honestly. Fourth quarter came, Joel [Embiid] asked me if I could finish the game. That's what I tried to go out there and do whether that was making the right read and getting to assist or getting us to action or scoring the ball. So, that's great.”
Joel Embiid and Nurse are at a point with Maxey where there’s probably no such thing as being too aggressive with him (within reason). They want him to shoot and attack constantly, so what’s holding him back?
“Sometimes, trying to make the right play,” Maxey said. “It was a couple times today the right play was for me to shoot and I passed it. But, you know, still trying to find that balance. My thing right now is I'm trying to pick my spots when to be ultra-aggressive and when to be able to get to the paint, get Joel shots, get Kelly [Oubre Jr.] shots, get Tobias [Harris], you know what I'm saying? Get them in the right spots, too. I think I'm doing a solid job of it right now. I knew in the fourth quarter when they made a little run that there was time for me to be aggressive and score the ball and find ways to get downhill or get to my shot. And that's how it kind of went.”
It will take some time for Maxey to master the balance of getting his Sixers teammates involved and hunting for his own looks. The way he has started this season couldn’t be more encouraging. Nurse said he liked some of the plays he called. He said that, by reading how the Suns played defense — the way they would tag off-ball players and blitz him in the pick-and-roll — he knew what he had to do. One thing that worked, he said, was hitting Paul Reed in the short roll.
Through time, Tyrese Maxey will continue to improve his feel as a floor general. But because the Sixers are screaming from rooftops that they want him to do that, it can be reasonably expected that he will.
