Philadelphia 76ers: How would a Maxey-Simmons-Embiid Big 3 work?

When the Philadelphia 76ers – see Colangelo, Bryan – traded up two spots in the 2017 NBA Draft to select Markelle Fultz out of Washington, it was to round out a homegrown Big 3 of first-round draftees.

As you most certainly know if you’re reading this story, that move ultimately proved disastrous.

Despite flashing prowess as a hyper-athletic slasher, Fultz’s shoulder injury significantly limited him on-court, and he was unceremoniously shipped out to Orlando for a pick that would eventually become Tyrese Maxey (and Jonathon Simmons).

All in all, said trade has gone down as one of the most glaring errors in the post-Process, pre-Daryl Morey dark age of Sixers basketball, right up there with trading Mikal Bridges for Zhaire Smith. Even if the Sixers have largely moved on from it and are still a very good team, one was to wonder what the roster would look like today if they have two more lottery-level talents in the fray, instead of a bench loaded with players picked out of the top-20, low-level free agents, and veteran stopgaps.

But I don’t want to talk about that. No, I want to talk about the merits of Bryan Colangelo’s roster-building philosophy and see if it would be applicable to a Big 3 of Ben Simmons, Joel Embiid, and the Tyrese Maxey – who has become everything Philly wanted Markelle Fultz to be – would work for the Philadelphia 76ers if they all somehow see the court together in 2021.

Could the Philadelphia 76ers’ homegrown Big 3 actually work well together?

Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, and Tyrese Maxey shared the court for 73 combined minutes in the regular season for the Philadelphia 76ers in 2020-21. They played together in 12 games, for an average of six minutes per game, and the results were predictably meh.

While the trio had a positive net rating, played at a decent pace, and held a turnover percentage of .1, which is very good, their offensive rating, defensive rating, player impact estimate, and pace were all incredibly average.

But why?

Well, early on in his run with the Sixers, Doc Rivers had a bad habit of playing Maxey off-ball when on the court with another ball-dominant guard. Theoretically, this wasn’t a devastating decision, as Maxey is a combo guard who shared the backcourt at Kentucky with Immanuel Quickley, but in practice, it just didn’t work.

Even now, Maxey isn’t a shooter that commands the undivided attention of an opposing defender, so as a rookie, having him space the floor for Simmons just didn’t make for quality basketball.

When the playoffs rolled around, and Rivers’ rotation shrunk, Maxey, Simmons, and Embiid surely saw their shared minutes on-court ticket up a tad, right?

Nope.

The trio appeared in five games and played 18 total minutes together, which, if my math is correct, is less than six minutes of average action per game. The trio had a higher offensive rating than their regular season output and thus had a better overall net rating, but once again, the trio were woefully average in their overall statistics versus the 209 three-man lineups Rivers utilized in the playoffs.

If the Sixers opted to utilize the same three-man lineup this season, likely with Tobias Harris at the four and a shooter like Seth Curry at the small forward spot, the lineup would likely perform a bit better than their 2020-21 counterparts, as Maxey is hitting 42 percent of his 3.2 shots from beyond the arc a night, but in an off-ball role where shooting takes priority over driving, his efficiency would likely sag down.

Only, here’s the thing; Maxey doesn’t have to be relegated to an off-ball role when paired up with another primary ballhandler.

No, as Rivers has reluctantly discovered over the past few games, Maxey is arguably the team’s best decision-maker with the ball in his hands, and thus, should be the team’s closer despite his pay discrepancy when compared to Harris. If Maxey and Simmons shared the court this season, the duo would likely split on-ball duties during the regular season, much like how Daryl Morey’s Houston Rockets utilized three-guard lineups featuring Russell Westbrook (Simmons), James Harden (Maxey), and Eric Gordon (Curry).

Do you remember that Rockets team? They were a ton of fun to watch in the regular season but fell apart in the playoffs because of Westbrook’s spacing and his poor on-field fit alongside Harden. While Simmons is probably a better player than Westbrook at this point in his career, albeit a player who never takes 3s instead of one who takes and bricks a ton of them, Maxey’s style of play isn’t close to Harden and having him adjust his role on the court in the middle of a very successful breakout season just feels wrong.

At the 8:13 minute mark in the third quarter of a random game? Yeah, Simmons and Maxey could play off each other fine, especially in the fastbreak, but in the final two minutes if a fourth quarter? Especially during the postseason? It’d be the Atlanta Hawks series all over again except with Maxey in the starting lineup instead of Furkan Korkmaz.

If the ultimate goal of the Sixers is to win a championship, Maxey and Simmons may just be too offensively redundant to succeed regularly.  Even if Maxey develops into a legitimate All-Star-caliber closer, which could very well happen in the not-too-distant future, having Simmons on the court alongside him would allow opposing teams to stack bodies in the paint and make Embiid’s life harder than it needs to be.

No, the optimum way to build this team if Maxey really is deemed the point guard of the future would be to pair him and Embiid up with a wing player who can serve as a secondary playmaker, a change of pace ballhandler, and ultimately close out games, which isn’t an incredibly long list but is theoretically possible in a trade centered around Simmons if Morey plays his cards right.

Fingers crossed at least a few of the team’s 30 players on their “Simmons trade list” fit that bill.

Had Markelle Fultz never been traded, would Bryan Colangelo’s preferred Big 3 have worked out? No. Back in 2017, Fultz was being called the next James Harden – he is not – and many assumed that Ben Simmons would eventually add an outside shot – he has not – to his game to become the next LeBron James. Instead, Fultz’s career trajectory was indefinitely altered by a shoulder injury, and his intended partner in crime, Simmons, has only really taken steps forward on the defensive end of the court. While Tyrese Maxey is arguably a better fit next to number 25 and Joel Embiid in actuality, he’d be much better off in a Philadelphia 76ers Big 3 filled out by an elite scorer with ice in his veins, instead of another slasher who doesn’t space the field when he doesn’t have the ball in his hands.