The Philadelphia 76ers asked too much of fifth-year guard Tyrese Maxey this season when they tasked him with carrying the team without Joel Embiid or Paul George.
This feels like one of the first offseasons in Tyrese Maxey’s young career that we won’t be talking about the monumental leap the guard took in the Philadelphia 76ers’ last campaign.
That’s not to say the fifth-year guard should completely hang his head about this season, though.
Maxey was put in a tough spot right away this campaign when it became known that he would be the only member of the Sixers’ “Big 3” (Joel Embiid, Paul George and Maxey) healthy and available to start the regular season. That transferred all the weight resting upon the trio’s shoulders and placed it squarely onto Maxey’s. No pressure.
Sixers’ coach Nick Nurse didn’t hesitate to lean on the guard, either, with Maxey averaging 39.7 minutes per game for the first seven contests of the season. This was also when the guard’s shooting was its least efficient and most erratic, understandably. Once George and Embiid returned to the floor alongside him (as infrequently as that happened this year), Maxey was given a bit more breathing room to play his game.
But, like seemingly everything else involving the Sixers this season, Maxey’s year burnt out early and unceremoniously. Hit with both a back injury and a finger sprain somewhat concurrently, Maxey last took the court on March 3 against the Portland Trail Blazers. At that point, he had already been visibly struggling to physically play through discomfort for some time before he was finally sidelined as the Sixers’ season lost any hope of being salvaged.
Maxey ended up playing in 52 contests this season, the lowest tally he’s posted in his five-year NBA career. Averaging 37.7 minutes per night, Maxey averaged 26.3 points per game with 6.1 assists and 3.3 rebounds per night.
Those marks are extremely similar to Maxey’s 2023-24 season (for which he was named an All-Star and the league’s Most Improved Player). No big leap there, but one did come on the other side of the ball. In 2024-25, Maxey posted a career-high 1.8 steals per game in what felt like the first season where he was really a factor on the defensive end for the Sixers, and he did it simply by utilizing his strengths that serve him so well offensively. He’ll never be the tallest or strongest guy on the floor, but he can be one of the most athletic and intelligent when it comes to game sense and a point guard’s instincts. So, he started to rely on that. Maxey used his game instincts to find tiny windows to poke away opponents’ passes or dribbles and then used his speed to make those deflections and take the ball the other way.
Unfortunately, nothing about this Sixers’ season was wholly positive, of course —Maxey is no exception. As mentioned earlier, Maxey didn’t take any sort of massive leap offensively this season. In fact, shooting consistency was especially evident for the guard this season, with Maxey posting a career-low 43.7% field goal average. He also shot just 33.7% from long range this campaign, his lowest mark since his rookie season when he was still a bench player. He also posted his highest turnover tally of his career with 2.4 per game.
We can take these things with a bit of a grain of salt, however, when we remember that he was being asked to carry essentially a rotating G League roster at times. Maxey was put an impossible position of trying to carry the load for a Sixers’ team missing two-thirds of its Big 3 with a less-than-stellar supporting cast. In 52 games, Maxey started in 31 different lineups. That, in addition to having to miss time on the floor due to injuries and one can understand a bit of trouble getting into a groove shooting or facilitating an offense.
Despite putting up similar offensive numbers to last season, Maxey simply struggled to carry the weight while battling shooting inconsistency, revolving lineups and a smattering of injuries to his teammates and himself. But hey, that was just the story of this Sixers’ season, wasn’t it?
When you consider the strides Maxey took on the floor as a team leader and a defender, as well as his leaps mentally dealing with a tough year full of struggles and injuries, I’d say he didn’t do all that bad. Maybe next season the Sixers won’t ask him to do it all himself.
Player Grade: B-