Philadelphia 76ers: It’s time to let Tyrese Maxey close out games

For the second time this season, the Philadelphia 76ers took on the player they’ve been openly pining for all year long: Damian Lillard.

Now looking a lot more like himself after an uncharacteristically slow start, Lillard and his Portland Trail Blazers took on a Sixers squad with Matisse Thybulle but still no Joel Embiid, and, in an increasingly predictable outcome, the game did not finish out in Philly’s favor.

Eventually, we may look back at these Embiid-less games and think “what if,” especially when the Eastern Conference seeding tightens up at the end of the regular season, but for now, Doc Rivers has a unique opportunity to try out different looks and see if they have any legs come playoff time.

Georges Niang at the five? Mixed results. Charles Bassey over Paul Reed as a backup backup five? Not too shabby. But there’s one look that Doc Rivers has been adamantly against deploying during this run of makeshift lineups, even if it’s put the Philadelphia 76ers at a disadvantage in a few very winnable games.

The Philadelphia 76ers need to keep the ball in their best point guard’s hands.

In the Philadelphia 76ers’ 111-118 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers, Tyrese Maxey scored 15 of the team’s final 33 points.

He made 5-7 shots from the field, all four of his free throws, and even drained a desperation 3 just inside the two-minute mark after his first three attempts on the night didn’t go in.

But wait, it gets better.

Not only did Maxey outscore the rest of his teammates in the fourth quarter – and the members of the Trail Blazers for that matter – but he did so while trading buckets with Damian Lillard, the player many a fan would package Maxey alongside Ben Simmons and picks to acquire.

Surely this was yet another pin in Maxey’s cap, and the sort of highlight-reel performance that is becoming a regular thing for the 21st overall player selected in the 2020 NBA Draft, but hidden inside the fantastic shots, the speedy full court buckets, and his first nine assist game as a pro was yet another game where Doc Rivers took the ball out of his point guard’s hands to instead try to get the offense going with Seth Curry.

Now earlier this season, such a move would have made some sense. Maxey was still very much a question mark, and having either Curry or Tobias Harris run the show in the two-man game with Joel Embiid made sense. But now? Now that Embiid is out and Maxey is one of the hottest drivers in the NBA? Yeah, I don’t get it.

Take, for example,  the final seven or so minutes of the Sixers-Blazers game. Maxey was taking unassisted shot after unassisted shot and making more of them than he missed, but once Harris left the game and he hit the aforementioned desperation 3 to keep a win within reach, Rivers called a timeout, and the game turned into an ISO showcase of Curry a la Games 6-7 versus the Atlanta Hawks a few months back.

The results? Curry turnover, Maxey layup, Isaiah Joe 3, and a seven-point loss.

Now would keeping the ball in Maxey’s hypothetical court have been enough to pull out the W? Probably not. The deck was stacked pretty advantageously in Portland’s favor after they went up 10 with 4:30 left to play, but goodness, was anyone else going to try? Once Harris left the game, the game should have come down to Maxey vs. Lillard, especially when you consider just how cold Curry was from the field up to that point.

No matter how you slice it, that decision just doesn’t make sense.

Doc Rivers definitely deserves some credit for his evolving appreciation for Tyrese Maxey. After barely utilizing him in his playoff rotation, not six months prior,  Rivers has accepted Maxey as his point guard and has kept him in-game at pivotal moments regress of the situation or score. But to truly unlock the Philadelphia 76ers’ potential, especially once Joel Embiid returns to the court, Rivers needs to become comfortable with Maxey running the offense as his primary perimeter offensive option instead of holding him on the wings waiting for a catch-and-shoot opportunity. After all, that situation is why the team pays Tobias Harris and Seth Curry.