Philadelphia 76ers: Tyrese Maxey needs a featured role in Game 5

­­­In case you haven’t heard, the Philadelphia 76ers have officially suffered their first loss of the 2023 NBA playoffs and will return to the Wells Fargo Center for a chance to close out the Toronto Raptors on their home court.

Unfortunate? You bet; it certainly would have been nice to give Joel Embiid’s thumb a few extra days of rest before taking on another team, the Heat or the Celtics, in the second round, but hey, what’s done is done; there’s no use crying over poor officiating, right?

Fortunately, the Sixers have a lot of good things going for them heading into Game 5 and should be able to shore up the issues that arose in Game 4. Between the return of Matisse Thybulle, who is one of the team’s top-6 players, the return of home cooking, and the return of Philly fans, who will most definitely have the Wells Fargo Center thumping with chants of “MVP,” momentum will surely be on Doc Rivers’ side of the scoring table after two games in hostile territory.

But nothing, nothing could be more impactful than a changed strategy heading into Game 5, as the Toronto Raptors don’t have a single answer for Tyrese Maxey, and the Philadelphia 76ers would be wise to exploit that fact until the song plays at triple zeros in the fourth.

The Philadelphia 76ers need to run their offense through Tyrese Maxey.

Game 4 versus the Toronto Raptors was not a marquee masterclass in the ways of Tyrese Maxey. After dropping 38 in Game 1 and leading his team in average points per game over the first three contests of the series, Maxey was only able to muster 11 points in 39 minutes of action to go with six rebounds, six assists, and a single turnover.

That’s…less than ideal but far from the reason Philly lost.

No, what played far more into Philly’s ineffectiveness on the offensive end of the court was the stop-start nature of Maxey’s contributions, as he’d go from an offensive focal point to an afterthought waiting in the wings for a catch-and-shoot opportunity.

Assuming the Sixers want to steamroll the Raptors on their home turf and deliver onto Philly fans a fond memory on the tail end of a topsy turvy season, that can’t happen again.

Despite having an All-NBA caliber backcourt defender in Fred VanVleet and a half dozen quality wing defenders who could give a smaller point guard fits, Maxey’s blazing speed and acrobatic layup package around the hoop have been incredibly hard for the Raptors to slow down despite the best efforts of defensive guru Nick Nurse. They’ve tried to glue VanVleet to his hip pocket like an NFL cornerback, tried to switch him onto bigger defenders with gigantic wingspan, and even to blitz him in the paint like his fellow draftee Joel Embiid, and through it all, Maxey had found ways to split defenders on his way to the basket, flick his signature midrange floaters, or even kick it out to a wing shooter like Danny Green for a higher percentage shot.

If VanVleet is still unable to go in Game 5, Maxey has to be the team’s number one offensive option, especially in transition and at the beginning of shot clocks. While the Raptors are a defensive-minded team with a ton of intriguing defensive combinations, Maxey can smoke almost any non-FVV option Nurse can place in his backcourt, from Gary Trent Jr. to 2022 Rookie of the Year Scottie Barnes. And hey, even if the Raptors are able to field a team at full strength, that offensive theory should remain unchanged, as Maxey has been able to best the injured 2022 All-Star more often than not.

After turning to Maxey whenever the team needs to end a Raptors run or start a rally of their own,  it’s time to let the second-year scorer run wild and take some more of the burden off of Embiid’s thumb and James Harden‘s hamstring.

It took the entire preseason for the Philadelphia 76ers to accept that Tyrese Maxey should be their starting point guard over Shake Milton. It took even longer to accept that he should be the team’s primary offensive facilitator in the halfcourt pre-James Harden trade and even longer still to accept that Maxey, not Tobias Harris, should be the team’s third option in the offensive pecking order. Four games into the playoffs, it’s clear Maxey should be the Sixers’ primary scoring option in their first-round series against the Toronto Raptors at the very least and maybe longer, depending on how the second-round matchup shapes up.