Philadelphia 76ers: Stephen A Smith is wrong about Tyrese Maxey

If you happened to tune into the Philadelphia 76ers‘ first home game of the James Harden era, you had two choices, either tune in to the NBC Sports Philadelphia telecast featuring the dynamic duo of Kate Scott and Alaa Abdelnaby or switch over to ESPN to watch J.J. Redick call his first professional game alongside Dave Pasch and Israel Gutierrez.

Considering the gravity of the debut for both Redick and Harden, 58 percent of the folks Section 215 polled on Twitter opted to hear Redick make his sideline debut, and for the most part, the reviews were glowing.

Redick broke down the game with effortless accessibility, provided some interesting insights both on playing with Joel Embiid and guarding Harden, and even broke down some more complicated coverage concepts like drop coverage and the Spain pick-and-roll.

However, things weren’t all roses for fans of Philly’s finest basketball club. No, before the game, and even for a bit at halftime, ESPN’s top dog, Stephan A Smith, went out of his way to call out Tyrese Maxey and suggest that the Philadelphia 76ers, a team he covered for decades during the AI era, couldn’t win it all with 2020’s first-round pick as their third star and that the team should instead focus on getting Tobias Harris back on track.

As the second half of the game thoroughly proved, that assessment is wrong.

Maxey has all of the requisite ability to become the Philadelphia 76ers’ third star.

Allow me to present you with the stat line of a player from the Philadelphia 76ers’ second-straight win over the New York Knicks.

25 points, four rebounds, and three assists in 36 minutes on 7-13 shooting from the field and 4-6 shooting from beyond the arc.

Those numbers, to quote ROH/AEW wrestler Danhausen, are pretty good. They ranked third overall on the Sixers behind Joel Embiid and James Harden and fourth overall also behind R.J. Barrett.

Who, you may ask, is that player? Well, it’s none other than Tobias Harris, the Sixers’ third max contract player and thus, the third member of the team’s Big 3.

… wait, those aren’t Harris’ stats at all. While Harris did have his best statistical performance playing off of Harden, cracking double-digit points for the first time since before the All-Star break, he only put up 15 points and did so on 5-10 shooting from the field, 2-4 shooting from 3, and a perfect 2-2 from the free-throw line.

No, those numbers belong to Tyrese Maxey, and they aren’t an anomaly either. Despite his new role, Maxey has actually put up 20-plus points in each of his last three games and is shooting 64.2 percent from the field and 64.3 percent from 3. Maxey’s 24.7 points per game ranked third on the team behind only Harden and Embiid, as do his assists, and despite being the shortest member of the Sixers’rotation, his 4.3 rebounds per game are actually an improvement over his season average of 3.2.

Are those ‘third starter on a championship team’ numbers? Yes. Though the sample size is again small, Maxey’s numbers are better than Jrue Holiday‘s last season with the Milwaukee Bucks and are better from a points/efficiency standpoint than any season Draymond Green had for the Golden State Warriors during their Big 3 era, or Kevin Love put up during his time teamed up with Kyrie Irving and LeBron James. Maxey is spacing the field very well as a catch-and-shooter, providing an incredibly speedy option on cuts to the basket, and remains a solid on-ball option when he runs the point alongside Embiid sans Harden.

Goodness, so if Maxey is scoring well, shooting better than ever, and is in the middle of a points-scoring bonanza despite his usage doing down, how on earth isn’t he the team’s third option? I mean, he averages the third-most points on the team, takes the third-most shots, and plays the third-most minutes; at what point does that make a player a team’s third option?

Look, I get what Stephen A Smith was going for; I really do. It’s hardly ideal to have a $180 million player averaging single-digit points per game, especially when they are playing big minutes, and getting Harris back to his season average would give the Sixers four legitimate threats to put up 20 in any given game. But to call Tyrese Maxey overrated or incapable of shouldering a bigger load now that James Harden had arrived is simply untrue; Maxey is playing like the Philadelphia 76ers’ third-best star and should be considered as such until he proves folks otherwise.