Philadelphia 76ers: Tyrese Maxey is justifiably named a Rising Star

As things presently stand, there is only one third-year player in the 2022 NBA All-Star game, Ja Morant.

Now granted, that number could expand out over the forthcoming weeks, as only the starters have been named to the NBA’s least consequential game, and Darius Garland has been balling out for the Cleveland Cavaliers but for now, Morant is the lone member of the 2019 NBA Draft class to make it to the All-Star game this season, as Zion Williamson has yet to step foot on an NBA court this season.

But on Monday, in the Philadelphia 76ers‘ final game of a very successful month of January, all eyes were on Tyrese Maxey, who outgunned the player drafted 19 spots higher in the preceding draft class to secure his team an overtime win down Joel Embiid.

For a guard playing only his 116th NBA game, this was a signature game for the second-year player, a “star-making” performance if you will, and apparently, the NBA was watching, as they’ve justifiably named the Philadelphia 76ers’ point guard to the Rising Star game on All-Star weekend, where he’ll surely bump into Ja Morant -and Joel Embiid – once more.

The Philadelphia 76ers have a legit rising star in Tyrese Maxey.

As things presently stand, there are 12 second-year players in the Rising Star game: Desmond Bane, Saddiq Bey, Tyrese Haliburton, Cole Anthony, Jae’Sean Tate, Isaiah Stewart, Jaden McDaniels, Isaac Okoro, Precious Achiuwa, LaMelo Ball, Anthony Edwards, and your friendly neighborhood Tyrese Maxey.

That’s a pretty formative group, with some legitimate stars, a few nice young players, and a few other players who fall somewhere in between.

Obviously, Ball and Edwards are the best of the group and fall into a unique tier all their own. The duo duked it out for Rookie of the Year last season in 2021 and will surely be the faces of their respective franchises for years to come. On the opposite end of the spectrum are players like Achiuwa, Okoro, McDaniels, Stewart, and Tate, the rare 26-year-old rookie, who are more roleplayers than focal points for their respective teams. These players are, to paraphrase NBA Twitter, nice in their own ways, but likely won’t become All-Stars moving forward unless they take a massive step forward in Year 3.

That leaves five players: Anthony, Bane, Bey, Haliburton, and Maxey who reside in a rare second-year middle class of players who aren’t quite locked to become All-Stars, especially the ones who play in the West but should have long and successful careers with teams as their second or third-best players.

Of those five players, give me Maxey every time.

Sure, Anthony has more swagger, Bane is a better shooter, Bey is a Villanova guy, and Haliburton is a better passer, but Maxey is a freaky finisher with the ball in his hands who tries very hard, can take over a game if need be, and has a pension for keeping his teammates engaged both on and off the court. You’ll nary find a person in our fair city who has an ill word to say about the second-year guard, not even ones who grew up fans of his college rivals like Duke, and in less than two full seasons of service, he’s miraculously transformed himself into a guard too meh to be drafted in the lottery into the second focal point of a team .5 games out of first place in the East down a max contract player.

If anything, the Sixers need to embrace that Embiid and Maxey are their focal point players and built around the duo with a perfectly complementary player like fellow 2020 draftee Haliburton, instead of looking at the team as solely belonging to their franchise cornerstone. After watching the duo put in legitimate effort to mesh their unique style together both on and off the court, Sixers fans the world over might just be watching the start of a beautiful partnership, to paraphrase Casablanca.

January 31st couldn’t have gone better for Tyrese Maxey. He put on a show in front of a packed house, went toe to toe against one of the NBA’s brightest young guards, and even got some extra eyes on the game thanks to it entering overtime, a period in which he scored six of the Philadelphia 76ers’ 12 points. If ever there was a star-making performance, or at least a “Rising Star”-making performance, that would be it, and the best part is such games are becoming more and more common for the second-year guard out of Kentucky, as it marked his third such game this season alone.