PHILADELPHIA — Doc Rivers knew he had something special in rookie guard Tyrese Maxey. He just didn’t know how special, but he knew he didn’t want to lose Maxey in a trade.
At the end of last season, Rivers decided that, no matter what, he would spend 2021-22 developing Maxey. Before the team dispersed for the offseason, Rivers told his coaching staff:
“I’m starting Tyrese whether Ben’s coming back or not.”
That could have had massive consequences. It certainly would have upset Ben Simmons, the oddest duck in the NBA pond. It probably would have meant that Seth Curry, Rivers’ son-in-law, would have come off the bench after starting the previous year. Curry is the second-most accurate 3-point shooter in NBA history, but Rivers didn’t care. Maxey had shown too much promise to stay buried behind Ben.
As it turned out, Rivers didn’t have to worry about chemistry and combinations. Simmons boycotted the Sixers’ season until he was traded to Brooklyn as part of a deadline package that landed James Harden.
All season, though, Rivers insisted that he preferred Simmons to return, and he welcomed the challenge of synching Simmons, a pass-first point guard, with Maxey, a born assassin.
“We were gonna force it, and do it,” Rivers told me last week. “The staff already had their walking orders as we walked away from the season last year.”
That’s why Sixers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey deemed Maxey untouchable during trade talks. Morey and Rivers saw potential others didn’t.
“Tyrese absolutely has a chance to be an All-Star in this league,” Morey sad recently.
Doc saw that, too, and that’s why he wanted to force Maxey into the lineup, even if his lieutenants didn’t.
“Half of my staff agreed. Half didn’t,” Rivers said. “I just felt like the only way he could get to where he needed to be is to play 30 minutes a night.”
Proven right
Four months later Maxey is a rising star, playing 35 minutes every night as a starter for a team that resumes the season Friday in Minnesota in third place in the Eastern Conference. This team hasn’t gotten one second of playing time from either Simmons or Harden (he’s hurt). It’s been the Tyrese Maxey show.
Maxey is averaging 16.9 points and 4.6 assists and making 39.0% of his 3-pointers after averaging 8.0 points, 2.0 assists, and hitting just 30.1% of his 3s as a rookie.
This is monumental improvement. Did Simmons’ absence speed Maxey’s development? Did either Rivers or Morey realize Maxey would develop so quickly?
“The increased playing time has helped Tyrese for sure,” Morey admitted. “He’s taken such a huge step forward. His shooting. His overall playmaking. Still, I do think he’s ahead of what we anticipated for him.”
Rivers’ faith in Maxey was strong, but not complete. Early in the preseason Maxey and Shake Milton were neck-and-neck in competition for the starting spot. Maxey was always Rivers’ favorite, and he won the job, but even if Simmons had remained an option, Rivers thinks Maxey might have maxed out.
“I think he was headed in this direction, anyway.”
Rivers liked what he’d seen from his rookie.
Glimpses
Maxey, the 21st overall pick in the 2020 draft, astonished the franchise when he dropped 39 points in his 10th NBA game. Injuries to Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons, combined with five COVID-19 protocol casualties, gave Maxey his first start, and no Sixers rookie had scored as many points since Allen Iverson’s rookie season in 1997.
“I knew he could play. But I didn’t know he could score 39 points in an NBA game,” Rivers said then.
Maxey scored 30 more in the season finale. In between, he had a hard time earning minutes. Simmons, Curry, Shake Milton, and Matisse Thybulle all had experience and established skill packages. Maxey was a flighty defender and a streaky shooter.
In fact, Maxey had played just 33 minutes and scored 13 points in the first five games of the Eastern Conference semifinals when, facing elimination in Game 6, he came off the bench and scored 16, seven in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, Simmons had refused to shoot in the fourth quarters of Games 4, 5, and 6.
Before Game 7, I asked Rivers if he’d considered starting Maxey either in place of or alongside Simmons.
“I’m not even going to answer that question,” Doc sneered at me.
Wrong answer. Simmons’ dunk-choke in his fourth fruitless fourth quarter cost the Sixers the series and further sullied Rivers’ postseason record.
Rivers realized his mistake soon after the season ended.
He’d been in a similar spot before.
Celtic glory
Rajon Rondo started 25 games as a Celtics rookie, scored a season-high 23 points twice, shot 41.8% from the field, and made just 20.7% of his 3-pointers for a lousy Boston club. By the end of July of 2007, Danny Ainge had remade Rondo’s rookie team in trades that landed Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen to pair with Paul Pierce. Then Doc dropped a bombshell.
“We made the trade for all those guys and I told our staff, ‘We’re starting Rondo.’ And they were like, ‘What?! He can’t shoot! How we gonna win it with a non-shooting point guard?!’ ” Rivers recalled.
His bosses weren’t happy, either. Ainge had been more bullish than Doc on Rondo from the start, but having Rondo run the Big Three was another matter.
“I got a lot of pushback from the front office on that one,” Rivers said.
The Celtics won the title that year.
Rivers sees a lot of Rondo’s work ethic in Maxey, which makes sense. Both are cerebral guards who went to Kentucky, both went 21st overall, and they now work out together in the summertime.
Will there be another similarity?
After all, Rondo, with Allen, Garnett, and Pierce, won a championship with Doc and the Celtics in his second NBA season. Maxey, in his second season, now plays for Doc, with Embiid, Harden, and Tobias Harris — and against a much less formidable cast of opposing teams.
Could Simmons’ holdout be the disguised blessing the Sixers have prayed for since 1983? Will Maxey’s fast development be the catalyst for the 76ers’ first NBA title in nearly four decades? Would Simmons’ presence have stunted Maxey’s growth?
“That would have hindered him some, for sure,” Rivers said. “He’s definitely accelerated. I don’t know how far. I didn’t know he could be this good this quick.
“But, yeah. I knew he could be this good.”
