Tyrese Maxey: The hero Philadelphia needs
A devoted dog dad with an MVP-level game who plays hard every second and only wants to win: He's the real Philly Special.
There is no Philadelphia sports figure without blemish.
The Phillies’ hitters failed again, and Zack Wheeler is hurt. The Eagles collapsed en masse after winning their second Super Bowl; even Saquon Barkley took hits before and during the season. The Flyers remain mired in a rebuild. And no team has engendered as much disappointment, if not disgust, as the Sixers over the past 14 years.
With one exception.
With his incandescent smile, his irrepressible joy, his boundless energy, and what has turned into a sterling set of skills and talents, Maxey is a beacon among the blurred and foggy landscape of Philadelphia sports.
Everybody loves Maxey. He’s the breath of fresh air Philly sports needed. He’s never worried about the score of the game. You never see him dog it. He’s Pete Rose with a jump shot.
Maxey will represent the Sixers as an NBA All-Star Game starter in Los Angeles on Sunday. This is fitting, since he’s the embodiment of what the Sixers hope to be and emblematic of how Philadelphia sees itself.
Joel Embiid represents “The Process,” has been diminished as a part-time role player, and is a reminder of the disastrous slash-and-burn rebuild that began in 2013.
Paul George represents the failed philosophy of Sixers president Daryl Morey, who bet everything on James Harden both in Houston and Philadelphia and made a similarly bad bet on George, addled by injury and seven games into a 25-game drug suspension.
Rookie guard VJ Edgecombe represents the future, but it is a future that depends on working in harness with Maxey.
Maxey represents the Philly of today: a city that sees itself as a collection of hardworking, well-meaning, decent, and spirited underdogs.
Philly guy
From Vince Papale to Rocky Balboa to the 2017 Eagles, Philly loves an underdog.
Maxey has always been an underdog.
He was never touted as an AAU player. He played for Kentucky for one uninspired season. He then was the 21st overall pick of the COVID-19 draft in 2020, behind the likes of Killian Hayes (seventh) and Kira Lewis (13th). A poor shooter, he started just eight games as a Sixers rookie. The Sixers hoped he’d be Dario Šarić or Landry Shamet, players drafted outside of the top 10 who have become dependable, if limited, NBA performers.
As it turns out, Maxey has no limit.
» READ MORE: What might Daryl Morey and the Sixers have in mind for this offseason?
His maniacal offseason workout regimen focused on shooting and turned him from a 30.1% three-point shooter as a rookie into a 42.7% bomber in his second season. His scoring average over the years went from 8 points to 17.5 to 20.3 to 25.9, which made him the 2023-24 Most Improved Player and an All-Star reserve. He missed much of last season with injuries and still averaged 26.3 points, and now he’s at nearly 29 points per game, an All-Star starter, and an MVP candidate.
Like former Eagles offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland said: Hungry dogs run faster.
Maxey stays hungry. Hungry for wins.
“I just want everybody to know I try extremely hard, I work extremely hard, and I leave it all out there on the court every single night. I play through whatever,” he said recently. “That’s the legacy I want to leave behind. But the main thing is to win.
“This is a town that believes in winning. And I believe in winning.”
Ravenous
Maxey used to practice so much they had to take away his keys to the gym.
He never was expected to play point guard. The Sixers drafted Maxey while Ben Simmons was on the team, then traded Simmons for Harden, then, when Harden forced a trade in 2023, Maxey took over the point. It was not pretty. He went to work.
He’s a complete point guard today. His ballhandling and passing have advanced so much that his Player Efficiency Rating this season is 22.72, about three points higher than his last All-Star season and fifth among point guards. He trails reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, five-time top-10 MVP candidate Luka Dončić, two-time MVP Steph Curry, and 2026 All-Star and NBA champ Jamal Murray. Which is why Maxey is an MVP candidate himself.
His game has blossomed.
“I play three different roles on this team,” he said. “Sometimes I’ve got to shoot 30 times. Sometimes I’ve got to get Joel the ball. Sometimes I have to play full-time point guard and guard [elite] people. That’s OK. Whatever it takes to win.”
He didn’t just develop a three-point shot, he developed Harden‘s three-point shot after pestering Harden to teach him during the Beard’s 1½ seasons with the Sixers. The result: a lethal, sidestep-stepback, coil-and-release mortar shell whose range knows no limit.
This season, he mastered the most important skill of any backcourt scorer: the pull-up jumper, the most lethal weapon in basketball, from Jerry West to Michael Jordan to Kobe Bryant to Kevin Durant.
How far has he come? He’d dropped in the draft because he couldn’t shoot. Now, on Saturday, he’ll be the first Sixer to compete in the three-point shooting contest since Kyle Korver in 2005.
He remains driven by that disrespect, but he isn’t disrespectful, and that endears him to Philly even more. Sure, Philly’s a rough place. Some people got a kick out of Embiid and his Twitter-beefing with players like Karl-Anthony Towns. Some people loved it when Bryce Harper stared down mouthy Atlanta Braves shortstop Orlando Arcia in the 2023 playoffs.
But those incidents also rubbed some people the wrong way. Maxey seems to always rub folks the right way.
What’s not to like? After all, Maxey is the No. 1 dog dad in a canine-crazed city.
Maxey owns three dogs. His first is named Apollo, after the Apollo Creed character in Rocky. Then he got Aries and Arrow. They are his family. Maxey told Sixers videographers that when he bought a house in South Jersey, he insisted it have lots of land: “Try to create a happy home for my dogs. Let them run around in this big backyard.”
He made a cameo appearance at the National Dog Show when it visited the Philadelphia area in November.
So, he loves dogs. He loves kids, too.
Maxey won the Bob Lanier Community Assist Award in 2024 for his offseason work with youths in Philadelphia and his native Dallas.
With Tyrese Maxey, it’s never about Tyrese Maxey.
I ran an informal Twitter/X poll Tuesday into Wednesday that asked, “Who’s your favorite Philly athlete?” I listed Harper, Kyle Schwarber, Saquon Barkley, and Maxey. (X only allows four entries.) Maxey won with 38% of the votes. Schwarber got 23%, Harper got 15%, and Barkley got 24%.
No, it’s not a scientific poll, and yes, it drew only about 400 respondents, but it makes sense nevertheless.
When the local TV broadcast spotted Maxey’s parents, Tyrone and Denyse (his name is a combination of theirs) at the Sixers’ game Saturday in Phoenix, play-by-play announcer Kate Scott called them “the Royal Family of Philadelphia.”
That’s because, at this moment, their son is king.
Always ‘us,’ never ‘me’
In an era of shameless self-promotion, Maxey never lobbies for personal accolades. He has never deemed himself an All-Star or an MVP until somebody else deemed him thus.
He’s always accountable, but he spreads the love. When Embiid dropped 40 on Jan. 31, Maxey detailed how the big guy’s game had developed to the point that Embiid found Maxey late in the game instead of forcing his own shot: “He played the right way.”
When George got suspended in the middle of a playoff push, Maxey never wavered: “We stand with Paul.”
He plays a child’s game with a child’s glee. It isn’t perfect, but Maxey has the most recognizable Philly smile since Flyers legend Bobby Clarke, and he flashes it all the time.
From diet to conditioning to practice to rest, he adores the process and the progress as much as he relishes the result.
It was Maxey who, in a team meeting last season, finally confronted Embiid about his selfishly tardy habits: how he kept teammates waiting at meetings, on buses, and on planes.
Maxey just shows up on time, pays attention, and plays his hardest every second. He’s the type of player Philadelphians swear they would be if they had the chance. He understands that he has a gift, and that he should rejoice in his gift, even if it doesn’t take him to the top of the mountain.
This weekend, that gift took him to L.A.