Now more than ever, it’s time for the Sixers to become Tyrese Maxey’s team

ESPN’s recent feature about Joel Embiid helped illuminate the Sixers’ need for Tyrese Maxey to seize control of the leadership role this year.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m still shook by the Joel Embiid feature from ESPN’s Dotun Akintoye last week. If you haven’t read it, stop what you’re doing—yes, that even means reading this article—and go check it out first.

As LB’s Paul Hudrick covered, it was a profile of a man who has suffered through both physical and mental trauma over the past decade. It’s remarkable that he managed to overcome as much as he did to reach the heights he had prior to his meniscus injury. However, that feature also underscored the enormous burden that the Sixers have placed upon Embiid’s shoulders.

If you’re reading this blog, you can likely recite Embiid’s plus/minus from the 2019 Eastern Conference Semifinals against the Toronto Raptors off the top of your head. (Plus-90 in 237 minutes on the floor, minus-109 in 99 minutes off.) That’s basically been the story of his entire career. The Sixers have the upside of a championship contender when he’s healthy, but last season showed how quickly the wheels can come off when he isn’t.

Embiid feels that pressure, too.

“It’s basically damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Because if you don’t play, then, you know, there’s this whole narrative. … I never cared about the ‘soft’ comments,” he told Akintoye about why he tends to rush to return from his injuries. “All I cared about was the team and my teammates. I never wanted to feel like I was quitting on them. And obviously, that goes back to the whole thing in therapy about not wanting to disappoint people.”

Fresh off a lost campaign and yet another knee surgery, the Sixers can no longer bank on Embiid being their focal point on both ends of the floor. At this point, anything they get out of him this year is gravy. There should be zero expectations for him. (His contract is a sunk cost now anyway.)

Instead of pinning their hopes on Embiid for yet another season, the Sixers should instead pivot toward being a backcourt-centric team. Between Tyrese Maxey, Jared McCain, VJ Edgecombe and (hopefully) Quentin Grimes, the Sixers currently have more depth at guard than they’ve had in my lifetime.

Maxey appears ready to seize more of a leadership mantle, too.

“I’ve been trying to reach out to guys and trying to help,” he recently told John Clark of NBC Sports Philadelphia. “I’ve just been kind of solo reaching out to guys, and then I’m gonna try to do a group thing at the end of the offseason. And it’s not even all about basketball, honestly. With me, I think the biggest thing is just getting to know each other, go grab something to eat, maybe go golf a little bit, maybe go play some laser tag.

“… I think the biggest thing for us is one, being healthy. I mean, you see it. The healthy team wins. You’ve gotta be really lucky, really good and really healthy to win. And just building that continuity. The more continuity that we build, I think the better we’ll be on the court.”

Maxey’s unbridled effervescence is what helped endear him to both Sixers fans and the organization over the past half-decade. Not only has he far surpassed expectations on the court after the Sixers selected him with the No. 21 overall pick in 2020, but he’s become the glue that holds them together off the court, too. One of the most brutal things about the injury-ravaged 2024-25 campaign was seeing how much it appeared to weigh on Maxey.

As wild as this is to say about a 24-year-old, Maxey is now the second-longest-tenured Sixer on the team, trailing only Embiid. That’s given him cachet in the organization, which he reportedly flexed last year while challenging Embiid about his habitual tardiness during an early-season players-only meeting.

None other than Sixers icon Julius Erving recently expressed his confidence in Maxey taking over as the leader of the team.

That doesn’t mean Embiid will recede to the background as a total afterthought. If he can get back to anywhere close to the form he showed prior to his meniscus injury in January 2024, he’ll still be the best player on the team. However, he made it clear to Akintoye that his style of leadership might not fit into the conventional definition that’s often expected from a No. 1 option.

“I never wanted to be a vocal leader,” Embiid said. “The way I was going to lead is my action. When I get on the court, whether it’s playing hard, carrying the team, doing whatever I have to do to put us in a position to win, that’s how I always saw myself as leading.”

If there’s one thing that Akintoye’s profile makes painfully clear, it’s how much Embiid tends to keep people at arm’s length. That’s seemingly a byproduct of his upbringing, as he told Akintoye that “from the moment that I was really young, you could never really open up about anything.”

He did say that he’s grown in that regard in recent years.

“If you ask my teammates now, they’ll tell you a way different story than my teammates a couple years ago, because years ago, I was nowhere to be found.” He blamed it on how he was raised and said he had “always taught myself to not trust anybody.”

From a foundational standpoint, it’s difficult (if not impossible) to build around someone with that type of disposition. That isn’t a reflection of Embiid on the court. When healthy, he’s still one of the top five or six players on the planet. But if Maxey assumes more of the vocal leadership role this coming season, that could allow Embiid to settle into the on-court leadership with which he’s more comfortable. The Sixers don’t need him to pretend to be a rah-rah type of leader.

Embiid isn’t Jalen Hurts. Despite what some hoagiemouths would have you believe, that’s OK. His injuries are the main reason why the Sixers haven’t advanced past the second round since drafting him in 2014. Everything else—including critiques about his leadership style—is secondary.

With that said, the Sixers no longer need to force him into that type of a role anymore. He’s already under enough pressure to return from his latest knee injury and salvage whatever’s left of his career. While he and the Sixers assuredly both hope that he’ll return to MVP form one day, no one should be expecting that going into this season.

For the past decade, the Sixers have largely gone as far as Embiid will take them. That’s an enormous responsibility to put on any one person’s shoulders, even someone as dominant as Embiid. But between Maxey, McCain, Edgecombe and (potentially) Grimes, Embiid now has perhaps more help from his supporting cast than he’s ever had in his NBA career. The Sixers don’t need him to be their alpha and omega anymore, either on or off the floor.

Instead, it’s time for Maxey to embrace his Embiid-appointed nickname—The Franchise.

Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Salary Swish and salary-cap information via RealGM.

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