Section 215
Fansided

Philadelphia 76ers: Tyrese Maxey completes Daryl Morey’s Big 3

By Matty Breisch

(Photo by Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)
(Photo by Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images) /
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The Philadelphia 76ers might have just lucked into their own Big 3.

Daryl Morey, you son of a gun, you did it.

Not only did you fix most of Elton Brand‘s missteps during his rocky run as the Philadelphia 76ers GM, but somehow, in a move that will be discussed by draft heads for years to come, you absolved his predecessor, Bryan Colangelo‘s biggest sin and delivered onto the City of Brotherly Love a homegrown, organic, 100 percent USDA Choice Big 3.

I never thought I’d see the day, but here we are, and my goodness, it’s glorious.

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For the longest time in the pre-Kevin Durant-era of NBA basketball, every team was looking to form their own Big 3 a la LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh down in Miami. OKC had Russell Westbrook, James Harden, and Kevin Durant, San Antonio had Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, and Tony Parker, and the Warriors had Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green.

And as for the Sixers? Well, they quickly found out that the dynamic trio of Jrue Holiday, Evan Turner, and Thaddeus Young just wasn’t going to write a one-way ticket for a parade down Broad.

Through the most radical roster rebuilding project in the history of mainstream sports – known colloquially as ‘The Process’ – the Sixers systematically lost game after game after game in the hopes of landing their own Big 3 – much to the chagrin of the rest of the NBA and sports in general.

Heck, the Sixers even hired a man heralded for his extensive experience with San Antonio’s Big 3, Brett Brown, in the hopes of turning a few years of tanking into a decade-plus of sustained success.

In theory, the idea was working out swimmingly… at least until everyone got antsy.

First, the Sixers landed Joel Embiid, a monstrous two-way center that then-GM Sam Hinkie described as having MVP-upside on a special episode of ESPN Daily with Pablo Torre. Had he been able to play right away, maybe the Sixers would have been a lot further along with their rebuilding process endeavors by the time Hinkie resigned in 2016, but after suffering a string of setbacks, that wasn’t meant to be. The Sixers instead finished out their third tanking season with their worst winning percentage in franchise history and a chance to draft the next LeBron James and/or Magic Johnson.

Had Simmons and Embiid been able to play alongside a solid supporting cast that also featured Robert Covington, Dario Saric, and… um, Jahlil Okafor, maybe they would, again, be on the way back to the playoffs for the first time in four years, but once again, the team got antsy.

With a top-3 pick secured by his precursor and a roster padded out with veterans like J.J. Redick and Amir Johnson, the younger Colangelo traded up two spots and extensively hitched his wagon to a 6-foot-3 combo guard out of Washington named Markelle Fultz.

And the rest, as you know, is history.

Fast forward to the summer of 2020, and both Colangelo and Fultz were long gone from the City of Brotherly Love and, in the cruelest twist of all, the Sixers were once again a first-round out with no clear path to contention. Rumors swirled that the team would have to trade away one of their two homegrown stars to perform a sort of ‘soft reboot,’ and some fans openly questioned whether they’d live long enough to see the aforementioned parade down Broad Street.

But then, Morey swooped in and made everything right in Philadelphia’s basketball world.

Gone were the days of employing Al Horford and Josh Richardson, and in their place came better fitting role players like Danny Green and Seth Curry – plus a slew of other smaller, yet no less significant moves to remake the bench in new head coach Doc Rivers‘ image.

But the one move that will surely rise above all others and could very well define the team’s future for the next decade-plus is the decision to draft Tyrese Maxey with the 21st overall pick in the 2020 NBA Draft.

Now I think I can say with pretty fair certainty that no one truly expected Maxey to end up in a red, white, blue, or even City Edition Boathouse Row black uniform. To paraphrase Dante in Kevin Smith’s seminal no-budget feature Clerks, Maxey wasn’t even supposed to be there at 21. He was a sure-fire lottery pick; Jalen and Jacoby said as much to his face in the lead-up to the draft. Sure, he was far from a guaranteed All-Star, or even a perfect fit alongside Simmons and Embiid in a starting five – that player was another dropped in the 2020 NBA Draft, Tyrese Haliburton – but Maxey projected as a plus defender, a solid shooter, and the type of player who could run an offense even without a legit outside shot.

Well, as it turns out, Maxey just may be that, and a whole lot more.

Through his first 10 games of NBA action, Maxey is averaging 10.1 points, 2.2 rebounds, and a pair of assists in 18.5 minutes of action. He’s making 52.8 percent of his shots from the field, 36.8 percent of his shots from beyond the arc, and a perfect 100 percent of his one free throws on a still-young season.

And best of all? Maxey doesn’t look out of his element or dissuaded by the moment.

Almost always the youngest player on the court, Maxey has run the show like a vet. He knows when to push the tempo, how to set his teammates up for an open look, and best of all, is averaging .7 turnovers a game – a number completely out of place on a Sixers squad averaging the third-most giveaways in the NBA.

Maxey also, as you probably already know, became the youngest player in franchise history to drop 39 points in a single game; a feat he accomplished in a game fans will forever remember fondly as the ‘Seven Sixers game’ due to the team’s incredibly shorthanded bench (moreish on that here).

Will we soon see the day when Maxey is starting over a player like Green or Curry? Has Maxey leapfrogged Shake Milton as the Sixers’ most promising bench player? Has the good Doc found his East Coast answer to Chris Paul?

Next. If you didn’t know Isaiah Joe, now you do. dark

In Tyrese Maxey – a player selected 20 picks after Markelle Fultz using the pick Elton Brand procured for his services – Daryl Morey found what Bryan Colangelo never could – an explosive two-way combo guard to build an organic Big 3 with alongside Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons. While the Philadelphia 76ers had to take the scenic route to get there, it sure feels nice to know that the future is sunny in… well, you know the rest.