Getty Tyrese Maxey, right, Sixers
For second-year guard Sixers guard Tyrese Maxey, the learning in the NBA has come quickly. He has averaged 16.8 points this season, on an impressive 47.3% shooting, while also dishing out 4.5 assists. Philly has tabbed him with star potential at age 21, and he has been delivering.
Most recently, of course, he poured in 25 points on 10-for-18 shooting in a win over the Nets.
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Yet Maxey remains a little touchy about his name recognition, as he admitted on the podcast hosted by teammate Georges Niang, the Big Niang Theory. Maxey recalled facing off against Toronto point guard Fred VanVleet and being stunned to find that VanVleet did not know who he was—or at least he feigned ignorance.
“Fred VanVleet, he helps me, he humbles me,” Maxey told Niang this week. “He literally walks up to me, I think I was playing pretty well in the game. He walks up to me and then looks at the ref and says, ‘This guy right here, you keep giving this guy calls.’ And I’m like, ‘Damn! He didn’t even call me by my name!’”
Maxey needed an explanation. “I pull him to the side when I scored and I’m like, ‘Dang, man, you don’t even know my name?’” Maxey said. “He’s like, ‘Course I know your name, man, I just had to, you know. Come on, man, we’re competitors, we’ll talk after the game.’ I was like, ‘All right, cool.’”
Maxey Draws High Praise for Performance vs. Nets
The performance against the Nets was comforting to see from a Sixers perspective because there were concerns about just how healthy Maxey is after missing two games in mid-December with a quad injury. Maxey played three games after that and struggled.
In those three games, Maxey averaged 11.3 points and shot 36.8% from the field. He bounced back by making five of his eight 3-point attempts against Brooklyn.
Nets guard James Harden was impressed.
“He knocked down some big-time shots,” said Harden. “A couple 3s — more than a couple — I think he hit three or four 3s in that fourth quarter. Pull up, he was being ultra-aggressive, which he’s been their starting point guard for the entire year, so he has that green light to attack the basket, to shoot a shot and he did that. He made some big shots for them and that was the game.”
Niang Tried to Trash-Talk Maxey
Niang himself recalled being impressed with Maxey, too, as an opponent last year when Niang was in Utah. Philadelphia played the Jazz on February 15, and Maxey managed to knock down a running floater early in the second quarter.
“He’s shooting a floater in the middle of the game and I was like, ‘Ain’t now way that’s going in,’” Niang said. “And he makes it and was like, ‘You better ask somebody.’ Something along those lines. I was like, ‘What did he just say?’”
Niang thought he would mess with Maxey. But Maxey came down and hit another jumper.
Niang asked him, “‘Yo, so … you got that floater in your game?’ and he looked at me and said, ‘You best believe I got that floater in my game.’ I was kind of like one of those moments, I kind of got trumped out because I tried to play him by getting him to shoot a shot I thought he couldn’t make and he proved to me, like three or four times, ‘I can make that.’ So I was like, ‘OK, let me just shut up.’”