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Philadelphia 76ers guard Tyrese Maxey missed a 27-footer to start the game on Thursday night, then followed that attempt up with a 26-footer that was off the mark. He would finish 5-of-17 from the field for 15 points during a disappointing 104-95 loss to the Atlanta Hawks.
Maxey is mired in arguably the worst shooting slump of his young career: 19-of-64 (29.6%). He knows it. His coach knows it. And everybody is trying to figure out how to fix it together.
“The paint sets his game and then everything else follows and I think right now he’s trying to do the reverse,” Doc Rivers said. “We struggle in life, we all do, and so he’s going to as well. He’s had three games in a row now and he’s gotta figure it out and we have to help him, and we’ll do that.”
The 22-year-old rising star – hard to believe he’s still so young, right? – owned his slump immediately and diagnosed the problem. Maxey is the best version of himself when he’s using his speed to blur by defenders in the paint. He has to be in attack mode all the time, instead of camping out at the three-point line or stopping short to draw contact.
“Honestly I gotta stop going to the hole like I’m not going to score, more like to get contact and stuff, and that’s on me honestly,” Maxey said. “And going to the rim, that’s what I do, one of the best things I do is finish the ball. And right now I’m trying to get calls and doing things like that and that’s not how I play the game, so I think that’s one of the biggest fixes.”
Sixers Bench Unit Provides Huge Spark Late
Let’s get one thing clear: Maxey is not the only problem, far from it. He’s still averaging 19 points per game over his last three contests despite the shooting woes. The whole team was flat against Atlanta and trailed by as many as 20 points late in the fourth quarter. They made sloppy passes. They turned the ball over. They bricked easy buckets.
Nothing seemed to be working so Rivers pulled his starters with 4:31 to go. His bench unit – Montrezl Harrell, Shake Milton, Matisse Thybulle, Paul Reed, Furkan Korkmaz – went on an 18-4 run and clawed them back to within 6 points.
“I didn’t think it was over, I just thought we needed more energy in the game,” Rivers said when asked if he had waved the white flag. “You could see it, we had no energy, and the problem was that second group we had great energy, we just didn’t have any offense, so you’re kind of caught.”
Rivers sent Joel Embiid, Tobias Harris, and Tyrese Maxey back in for the final 1:28 but they couldn’t close the gap.
“The gameplan was let’s see if we can get it to 10,” Rivers said. “If we can get it to 10 [points], we can win the game.”
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