Tyrese Maxey stuns New York, puts league on notice

NEW YORK — With 34 seconds left, the Knicks up four and the shot clock winding down, the Sixers trapped Jalen Brunson 35 feet from the basket, forcing the ball out of the hands of New York’s superstar and into that of Deuce McBride.

As they have for most of this series, New York’s role player made the most of the opportunity, with McBride sinking a foul line jumper to put the Knicks up six with 28 seconds left, sending New York fans into a state of rapture.

Then Tyrese Maxey had the first true signature moment of his young career.

Embiid set a screen on McBride, New York’s primary defender on Maxey, forcing Robinson to switch out onto Maxey at the 3-point line. Once Maxey got Robinson into the air on a pump fake, it was on. Maxey drew the foul, made the shot and converted the elusive, but critical, 4-point play.

“We knew we had to get some 3s up. I mean, I just tried to get to a spot and rise and shoot. Thankfully, [Robinson] jumped,” Maxey said after the game about the play.

Tension emanated from the World’s Most Famous Arena, but the Knicks still had control of the game, up two with the shotclock unplugged. All they had to do was get the ball in and make their free-throws.

After New York inbounded the ball the Sixers waited until Josh Hart touched the ball before committing the intentional foul, letting the good (79%) but low volume (1.4 attempts per game) foul shooter head to the charity stripe with the game on the line. Hart made one or two.

Every moment of brilliance in the NBA is usually created by the opponent making a mistake along the way, and New York had just made two of them.

Maxey made the most of it.

With the Sixers down 3 and 15 seconds left, New York opted not to foul, arguably yet another mistake by the home team. Embiid set a screen for Maxey a step inside of the halfcourt line, setting the Sixers’ young star up for a pull-up bomb from the logo, with no offensive rebounder in position if things went awry. Miss, and the season was over.

Maxey didn’t miss, much to the shock and dismay of every rich person on celebrity row.

“I mean, that’s just a lot of reps,” Maxey said of his game-tying shot that sent the game into overtime. “Rico [Hines] has been on me all year about shooting the deep ones, and I’ve been working on it all year, so it paid off.”

Some will argue that those 30 seconds will only be remembered if the Sixers are able to come back and win the final two games of this series, and certainly if the Sixers are able to do that it will only add to The Legend of Tyrese Maxey.

But in reality those shots will serve as a pivot point in the career of one of the young, ascending stars in this league. Fresh off a Most Improved Player award, off of his first All-Star appearance, and having made a legitimate case for All-NBA, Tyrese Maxey is now a household name who is believed in, and trusted by, his fans and teammates, and who is now feared and respected by opposing fan bases across the league, the kind of terror you can only instill by ripping out a few hearts along the way.

It was the birth of a playoff mother f—-, and it was glorious to see.

While not quite as memorable, the sequence of events which allowed the Sixers to take control of the game in overtime should not be forgotten either.

After Jalen Brunson started the extra period off with a personal 5-0 run, Tyrese Maxey drilled yet another 3, this one a step-back off of a dribble handoff with Embiid.

This, in no way, constituted a dagger, with the Knicks still up two and 3:38 left on the clock. But it very much felt like a dagger, because it was in that moment that everyone in The Garden knew, deep down, that Tyrese Maxey wasn’t letting the Sixers’ season end just yet.

“I just remember the last fourth quarter [Game 4], I wasn’t in rhythm, I didn’t play well, I wasn’t aggressive. I refused to let that happen this time,” Maxey said after the game. “I came out aggressive as soon as the fourth quarter started, as soon as we got the ball, I was going out there aggressive.

“I’m a happy guy, but I absolutely hate losing. Especially when it’s certain times like I miss three crucial free-throws, then I turn the ball over late,” Maxey explained. “I was really upset and I just wanted to go out there and make up for it for my teammates. I feel like I played pretty well the whole game, and for us to lose a game like that, end the season like that, I would have been crushed.”

Following that Maxey explosion, Joel Embiid used the extra period of free basketball to play his best ball of the night, controlling the paint defensively and acting as a hub on offense. During this decisive stretch Embiid altered a Josh Hart shot at the rim, had a steal and block after switching onto Brunson on back-to-back possessions, and converted a crucial and-1.

The Sixers, led by their two stars, sprinted out to a 9-0 run in overtime to finally take control of the game and force a Game 6 in Philadelphia on Thursday night.

Philadelphia, both in the media and on social media, spent much of the time between games 4 and 5 debating whether this series is another entry in the “Joel Embiid comes up small in the playoffs” database, mostly because of his struggles down the stretch in Game 4.

Coming into the game I pushed back on the idea that the guy putting up an efficient 35 points, nine rebounds and 5.5 assists, and who was leading the series (for both teams) in +/-, was coming up small. But Philadelphia loves nothing more than to question the merits of its own stars.

After last night’s game, where Tyrese Maxey dropped 22 points in the fourth quarter and overtime and where Embiid struggled for most of the night, that conversation isn’t going to go away, even if Embiid did come up with some clutch plays in the extra period.

You can already predict that, if the Sixers are to lose this series, that Philadelphia will spend its summer debating whose team it really is, which superstar should be the centerpiece of the franchise, and who the offense should be built around.

I’m going to get ahead of that now: stop. Just stop.

If anything, this series has showcased just how simpatico Philadelphia’s two stars are, and how they are each able to bring out the best version of the other. That is the holy grail of team building, the elusive synergy that has been missing in so many recent, failed superstar pairings, and the stroke of luck that the Sixers needed to salvage the second half of Joel Embiid’s prime after nearly a decade of mismanagement.

Tyrese Maxey is better when he’s playing with Joel Embiid and Joel Embiid is better when he’s playing with Tyrese Maxey. Embiid’s gravity makes Maxey’s shooting more dangerous, his passing covers up for some of Maxey’s inexperience as a floor general and his defense anchors the Sixers on the other end of the floor.

So far this series, both stars have had moments of brilliance, and both have come up small in others.

When the Sixers were in a do-or-die Game 3, Joel Embiid came up with one of the clutchest performances of his career, dropping a 50-spot on one knee and a half-paralyzed face to keep the Sixers alive.

When the Sixers were in another do-or-die spot in Game 5, Tyrese Maxey countered with a 46 and 9 display that will be etched in the back of our minds for the rest of Maxey’s career, a performance that calls back to the great Reggie Miller.

Both were magnificent displays of grit, determination and skill level. Having two players, each capable of saving a season, is a beautiful thing, as long as we don’t use it to force a debate for the sake of manufactured outrage, attention and clicks, as the media, especially in this town, is wont to do.

Both have had their struggles as well. Lost in the obsessive debate over whether fans trust Embiid down the stretch of games is that Tyrese Maxey really struggled late in Game 4 as well, and has been brutally ineffective in the 36 minutes that Joel Embiid has been on the bench this series. Embiid, obviously, struggled down the stretch in Game 4 and looked like he was running on fumes for most of Game 5.

Neither star has been perfect.

But the idea of a perfect postseason star is mostly a myth. Jalen Brunson shot 29% from the field in New York’s first two wins in this series. He had a chance to step up and have a historic Game 3 in large part because New York’s role players pulled out a victory in each of those two games where he struggled mightily.

That is a luxury neither Maxey nor Embiid have. If you swapped New York’s role players for Philadelphia’s role players, Philadelphia would be on the verge of advancing and the narrative might very well be that Brunson’s early playoff disappointment doomed New York before the series even left the Big Apple.

The series can be reductively summed up as: Joel Embiid (Game 3) and Tyrese Maxey (Game 5) each won one game for the Sixers, Jalen Brunson (Game 4) and New York’s role players (Game 1) won one each for New York, and the refs had an out-sized influence on the final score of the other (Game 2).

The Sixers can be annoyed at the refs, but this summer will have to fix the role player problem that they themselves created. Role players matter, and that should be the overriding takeaway from this series if the Sixers do fall short.

But the synergy between your primary stars matters a great deal too, and is a foundation that few teams have to build around. And, no matter what happens from here on out, Embiid and Maxey have shown that they have what it takes to be a great superstar pairing.

For the second time in three games in this series I’m sitting in a hotel room in New York, getting ready to file my game story with the exact same overriding conclusion: Tyrese Maxey is THAT GUY, the synergy between he and Embiid is darned near perfect despite Maxey being so early in his career, and I just hope that Daryl Morey is able to put a capable supporting cast around them this summer to take advantage of that while Embiid still has enough meniscus left in his knee to dominate.