How Tyrese Maxey overcame an elite Timberwolves defense

Joel Embiid scoring 51 points against the No. 1 defense in the NBA makes for an easier headline than anything else we saw in Monday’s Sixers win over the Timberwolves. But it was not the most important story of the evening — that honor belongs to Tyrese Maxey, a 35-point man himself.

It has been a season of growth for Maxey, who has blown past questions about his ability to run the point with an ironclad All-Star season. The Timberwolves, though, are as tough a test as he can face. They can throw big, athletic defenders at him at the point of attack, starting with Jaden McDaniels, one of the league’s most versatile wing athletes. And then there’s big Rudy Gobert on the back end, who reminds you that if you beat the first set of pterodactyl arms, there’s a bigger wingspan to deal with.

Early in the third quarter, Sixers head coach Nick Nurse was unhappy with Philadelphia’s pace and energy, seeing that his team was sluggish after coming out strong against an elite opponent. So he offered a challenge to Maxey, the man tasked with running the offense.

“You’ve got to get the ball up the floor and play faster. You’ve got to be more decisive. If they pressure you, go around them, whatever. And I thought he did pick up the pace,” Nurse said.

At moments in that second half, it appeared the Wolves would win the chess match against Philly’s lead guard. Gobert was playing high to prevent Maxey’s pocket passes to Embiid out of the pick-and-roll, forcing multiple turnovers on that action to kickstart Minny’s fast breaks. The Wolves were intent on denying entry passes to Embiid with the big man destroying them all over the floor. And so Embiid, always a big brother to Maxey, reminded him of one of the many things he’d spent time on in the offseason.

“He kept trying to make the pocket pass, and I just told him to [use] the hang dribble he worked on all summer with his trainer and Drew [Hanlen],” Embiid said.

Out came the hang dribble. Suddenly, non-existent passing windows turned into easy, pitch-and-catch plays for the Maxey-Embiid combo:

“He had Rudy guessing,” Embiid noted, “which is good to see.”

It is in many ways a snapshot of Maxey’s uncommon coachability, a 23-year-old star who is willing to accept guidance in the middle of an excellent performance. It is also the sort of on-the-fly adjustment against elite competition that needs to happen for Maxey to be a title-winning No. 2 next to Embiid. And outside of health, Maxey’s ascent to that level is the most important thing for Philadelphia to track between now and the start of the playoffs.

Maxey is usually reluctant to let the public inside his basketball process, boiling down the ebbs and flows of his game to aggressiveness. It’s somewhat common for players of his level, where self-belief is so strong that failure can only be seen as a product of not going hard enough yourself. And, to be fair to Maxey, running a team is something he hasn’t had to do full-time until this season. Aggression is indeed something he has to manage.

The great gift of James Harden’s departure is the opportunity it has given Maxey without Embiid on the floor. Philadelphia continues to win Embiid-less minutes, mostly due to Maxey’s relentlessness and pliability. You can see the impact of his ever-shifting role on Maxey’s skill growth. One minute he’s a pocket passing, pick-and-roll guard, the next he is coming off of handoffs and using his movement as a weapon. A defender’s length advantage doesn’t matter much if they can’t keep up with you coming off of a screen:

It should come as little surprise that Maxey has studied some of the game’s other dynamic shooters — he namechecks Damian Lillard and Steph Curry, but also Portland’s Anfernee Simons, a dangerous guard in his own right. Curry’s legacy seems somewhat obvious watching Maxey these days, and it is still somewhat jarring to watch him effortlessly hit movement and relocation threes after hardly shooting threes at all in his rookie season.

Maxey knows what the stakes are playing with Embiid and how important his shot diversity is to make things go. If teams can’t play drop coverage because the guard shoots them out of it, his playmaking opportunities grow. If an opponent sells out to take those passes away, his path to the rim will be there. And when you’re a threat to shoot no matter when or where in a set you are, you become a different level of unguardable.

In Embiid-less minutes, the power of his shot is no less important. In bench lineups with Paul Reed at center, the Wolves picked Maxey up out to halfcourt at times, trying to fluster him before he could get Philadelphia into a set. In response, the Sixers brought Reed and other ball screeners up higher, giving Maxey a long runway to build speed and hit Rudy Gobert with power at the basket.

That sort of coverage is one of the few things that can pierce through Maxey’s resting state of humility.

“That’s the kind of aggressiveness we’re talking about,” Nurse said. “There’s opening, there’s space, man you got to attack downhill and figure it out later.”

“I just don’t feel like anybody could stand in front of me picking me up that high, just from speed and work,” Maxey added Monday.

The work, so far as stats are a product of it, is undeniable. Embiid told reporters on Monday he believes Maxey deserves to start the All-Star Game in Indianapolis, forget about making it. Winning a popularity contest against Tyrese Haliburton and Damian Lillard might be tough, but he has an ultra-compelling case with a combination of nightly production, a great development story, and an impact on winning.

Maxey’s first appearance in a midseason exhibition will be more meaningful as a signpost on his Wikipedia page, but it’s games and moments like these that will define this season, and certainly the medium-term outlook for the Sixers. He has been in the league long enough for all observers to feel confident he can beat up on subpar competition, and he has shown the consistency it takes to be a star this season. The final, elusive level is learning how to win the chess matches against teams who can take your best stuff away.

This good news is that Maxey’s bag of stuff is deep enough that it has become damn near impossible to stop him altogether. And if he can problem solve like this in late December, teams should be very worried about what he might be capable of by the time April, May, and June roll around.