Philadelphia 76ers: The legend of Tyrese Maxey continues to grow

‘The Philadelphia 76ers just aren’t built to defeat the Toronto Raptors. They don’t have the size, they don’t have the shooting, their coach is a choke artist, and their second star is washed.’

If you’re a fan of Philadelphia’s lone professional basketball team, you surely read similar quotes in the six-day leadup to the Sixers’ first bout of the 2022 NBA Playoffs and heard even more of it from national personalities on ESPN, FS1, and sports talk radio. Despite having the two best players in the series, it became a popular bet to pick against Joel Embiid and company in the Eastern Conference’s 4-5 series, and when the ball tipped off moments after Meek Mill rang the bell, the atmosphere across the fanbase could be best described as tentatively optimistic.

And then the game got going, and suddenly, the excitement started to grow.

The Raptors got into foul trouble early on, with both Fred VanVleet and Chris Boucher having their nights prematurely called due to six whistles, and the Sixers overpowered Toronto in the areas where they typically shine, finishing out the game with more made 3s, more fast break points, and ultimately, more points total.

Indeed James Harden‘s Wells Fargo Center playoff debut was a night to remember for fans of the Philadelphia 76ers for a variety of different reasons, but none was more impressive than a legendary performance by Tyrese Maxey, who came just a point shy of setting a new career-high in points scored.

Philadelphia 76ers fans will be talking about Tyrese Maxey for a very long time.

The Toronto Raptors are a tall, switchable team capable of running all sorts of exotic defensive coverages and beating teams in a variety of different ways. They have a certified All-Star in Pascal Siakam, a quasi-star in OG Anunoby, and a positionless rookie by the name of Scottie Barnes, who might just go down as the best player of the bunch when it’s all said and done.

What they don’t have, however, is an answer for Tyrese Maxey, and that, my friends, was the difference between an upset win, a close loss, and the final results of the game, a 20 point win by the Philadelphia 76ers.

Right from the jump, Maxey came ready to play, baiting Fred VanVleet into a quick foul before scoring seven of the team’s first 14 points on the way to a 15-point first half. Maxey dished out dimes to his teammates, rebounded the ball when it came his way, and, most crucially of all, pushed the pace on a Raptors squad known for winning the transition game.

At the half, one would assume Nick Nurse would have taken this into account and keyed in on Maxey as a player to slow down in the second half, but whatever adjustments the championship-winning head coach made proved fruitless, as the pride of Kentucky somehow returned to the court even hotter than he left it, scoring 21 points in the third quarter – the second-most points scored in a quarter of a playoff game by a Sixers player behind only Allen Iverson – on his way to a 38 point performance; just one point shy of his career-high.

Despite sharing a backcourt with three-time scoring champion James Harden, Maxey looked like the Sixers’ premier perimeter scorer and was treated like one, with “The Beard” facilitating for his decade-younger teammate on more than a few occasions. The pairing outscored the Raptors’ guard by a combined score of 60-27 and formed an elite one-two-three punch alongside Joel Embiid, who only had to score 19 points on the way to a 20-point win.

Needless to say, fans in attendance at the Wells Fargo Center will remember this one for a very long time.

Will Tyrese Maxey be able to follow it up in Game 2? Will Nick Nurse’s super-sized lineup remain ill-equipped to stop the 21-year-old sparkplug, or will he put Fred VanVleet on the similarly sized guard in the hopes of shutting down the Philadelphia 76ers’ one-man transition once and for all? Only time will tell, but if “Mad” Maxey can continue to play like he did in Game 1, we might not have to worry about a second trip to Toronto, as the series might not need a sixth game to crown a victor.