Philadelphia 76ers: Bringing Tyrese Maxey off the bench is pointless

To call the Philadelphia 76ers a top-loaded team would be an understatement.

They get 85.7 percent of their points in any given game from their starting lineup, have no bench players who average double-digit points, and, if recent rumors are to be believed, are rapidly becoming disenchanted with their head coach. Of the 17 players on the Sixers’ roster, only three are plus defenders according to FiveThirtyEight, and, in an unlucky twist of fate for a team with a pair of double-team-drawing ISO scorers, Tyrese Maxey is their only player with a 3 shooting percentage above 40 percent.

If it was still two months ago, we’d be collectively scratching our heads while scouring the trade machine for players worthy of playoff playing time, but alas, it’s the fist of April, not February, and the best chance the Sixers have at upgrading their rotation would be to turn to the young guys instead of the same old guys – literally – who haven’t been getting it done.

Could the Philadelphia 76ers’ rotation use a serious shakeup? Oh, you’d best believe it, but relegating Tyrese Maxey to the bench, an idea suggested by ESPN’s Tim Legler, is a pointless proposition that would do very little to fix the team’s issues and could actually make the team worse in more ways than one.

The Philadelphia 76ers need to reconfigure their rotation, not bench their third-best player.

Tyrese Maxey may have the most varied set of responsibilities of any player on the Philadelphia 76ers.

In the starting lineup, Maxey is a 3-and-D floor spacer who will occasionally bring the ball up the court but routinely hands it off to serve as a dynamic scoring threat positioned on the wings. If his would-be defender blitzes Joel Embiid and/or James Harden in the paint, Maxey can make them pay with his deceptively lethal outside shot. If, however, his man runs back into coverage or another player switches over with an outstretched arm, Maxey has proven himself just as comfortable driving into the pair for a layup or performing his patented jump stop into a midrange shot.

While this iteration of the Sixers’ starting lineup has taken the ball out of Maxey’s hands more than any other player, as he went from averaging 84.8 touches per game before February 25th to 66.3 from that point on, the second-year prospect out of Kentucky’s points per game have risen from 16.9 to 18 even, so touching the ball less has shifted his on-court role more than his offensive efficiency.

But then, when the Sixers’ starters split off into their respective reserve units like the end of homeroom in high school, Maxey’s offensive responsibilities expanded exponentially. As he did from October through mid-February, Maxey returns to his role as an on-ball point guard when paying sans Harden and is tasked once more with running the offense either alongside fellow home-grown stars like Embiid or even as a part of Doc Rivers’ patented four reserves-plus-a-star “Bench Plus” lineup. In those minutes, Maxey can run more freely, play to his strengths, and put up quick points like only he can do.

So naturally, it’s easy to assume that because Maxey is a more effortless scorer when he has the ball in his hands instead of differing to Harden, bringing him off the bench in place of the 10-time All-Star would make the Sixers instantly better, right? Plenty of teams have a sixth man who serves as an energizer bunny coming off the bench and excel with such a strategy; why can’t Maxey fill that role for the Sixers?

Well, here’s the thing: Maxey’s offensive efficiency has more to do with how he’s used, not when he first enters a game.

I know, crazy, right? But hear me out; Maxey plays 35.6 minutes per game, which ranks second on the team behind only Harden. Of those 35.6 minutes, Maxey spends 27.125 of them on average on the court with Harden, versus only 8.475 without him, according to the NBA’s advanced analytics. Unless one wants to completely split up the minutes of Maxey and Harden, which would give the former a little over 10 minutes of action over an entire game, the two players are going to have to play together for at least part of the game, if not most of the game if both are going to play 35-plus minutes.

If the goal is to get more Maxey minutes sans Harden, play more Maxey minutes without Harden, but the idea that the duo can’t play well together or that the former is somehow diminished playing alongside his older backcourt mate is flippantly untrue, as they are both members of one of the most efficient high-usage lineups in the NBA.

That’s right, of all the lineups across the association that have played at least 250 minutes – which is 26, if you care – the Sixers’ current starting five currently ranks second in Net Rating behind only Boston’s lineup of Al Horford, Marcus Smart, Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, and Robert Williams III – a lineup that is unavailable for the foreseeable future due to Timelord’s torn meniscus. They have the fifth-highest Offensive Rating at 119.7, the fourth-lowest Defensive Rating at 102.0, and against all odds, have found a balanced approach that routinely allows Rivers to go to his bench with a lead.

Between you and me, a bigger issue the Sixers have been suffering through over the past few games has to be Rivers’ reluctance to play Matisse Thybulle at the end of close games, as none of the team’s other perimeter players can hold a candle to his defensive efforts, but hey, that’s a conversation for another article.

Should the Philadelphia 76ers give Tyrese Maxey more opportunities to run the show with the ball in his hands? Yes, one could even argue that their transition offense should be centered around getting the ball to Maxey, not James Harden or Joel Embiid, as he’s by far the team’s best offensive weapon in the full court. But bringing Maxey off the bench, especially if he’s still playing 36-ish minutes per game, is a fairly pointless proposition, as the Sixers’ current starting five is among the best lineups in the NBA, and it wouldn’t fix the underlying issue, which is how many times the second-year star is given a chance to run the show with the ball in his hands.