Philadelphia 76ers: Georges Niang shows love to Tyrese Maxey

The NBA season is long and unforgiving.

Teams get hot, get cold, and then hot again, and have to suffer through long flights, sleepless nights, and the near-constant fear of being traded for from late June through February. One game you’re up, the next your down, and through it all the product on the court can’t suffer, otherwise, the prospects of a career’s upward trajectory can spiral out in a hurry.

When that happens, getting back to the game’s highest level can prove incredibly difficult, as folks like Isaiah Thomas and Nik Stauskas can tell you firsthand, but fortunately, it’s just as easy to parlay a few good months of play into a playoff role and a chance to make history.

At its core, basketball is a team sport. Sure, having star players helps, but no championship has ever been won by one player; not even when that player is LeBron James, Kevin Durant, or even Michael Jordan. Fortunately, when one of a team’s star players also happens to be their emotional lifeblood, it can galvanize the troops like few others.

Do you like rooting for likable athletes? Well, according to Georges Niang, there isn’t a more likable player on the Philadelphia 76ers, or dare he say, the City of Brotherly Love as a whole, than Tyrese Maxey.

Tyrese Maxey makes the Philadelphia 76ers a very rootable team.

On Friday, Barstool Philly asked a simple question: Who is the most likable player in Philadelphia Right now?

The question did fairly well, garnering 390 likes, 136 retweets, and 380 comments, but none of them proved more valuable than a quote tweet from Georges Niang, who responded with a certain GIF of a freshman guard from Kentucky dancing with his Dad before the 2020 NBA Draft.

Do you know who that player is? Yeah, that would be none other than the Philadelphia 76ers’ very own Tyrese Maxey, the most likable player in Philadelphia, at least according to Niang.

… do you know what? Scratch that, according to Section 215 too.

On paper, Maxey has everything a fan could look for in a franchise player. He has impeccable manners, a cute though big dog that he calls his son, and the sort of boundless enthusiasm that energizes even the most veteran of teammates. When Maxey gets going, especially to the rim, his game is showtime, and he backs it up with a big smile and an even bigger expression to back it up.

Considering the hate Joel Embiid and James Harden get on a nightly basis for their “flopping” ways, Maxey is a breath of fresh air that even the most cynical of NBA fans can’t deny.

And the best part? Maxey is only 21 and on a rookie contract for the next two seasons at the very least; what a fantastic world we live in.

When Tyrese Maxey came into the NBA, he was considered an undersized combo guard who couldn’t shoot 3s, facilitate an offense, or do much more than provide some energy coming off the bench. Now, not even two years into his NBA career, he’s a 41.7 percent shooter from beyond the arc, runs the show with the ball in his hands, and has started all but one game he’s appeared in so far this season. If that doesn’t scream “likable player,” well, watch a Philadelphia 76ers game the next time “Mad Maxey” is on the court – which is most games – and watch your fandom blossom over the forthcoming 48 minutes of action.