Tyrese Maxey was obvious NBA Draft steal the entire time

Tyrese Maxey was the NBA Draft steal that wasn’t so surprising.

Deuce McBride flashed to the middle of the lane and caught a pass from Jalen Brunson as the New York Knicks’ star was getting trapped on the perimeter. McBride calmly stepped into a free throw line jumper and swished it, giving the Knicks a six-point lead on the Philadelphia 76ers with 29 seconds left. Down 3-1 in the series, Philadelphia needed a miracle to avoid elimination in the final seconds of Game 5.

Somehow, Tyrese Maxey delivered it.

Maxey drove left, pump faked, and got New York’s Mitchell Robinson in the air as he leaned into him and launched a three-pointer. Cash, and-one. After completing the four-point play, the Sixers fouled Josh Hart who split a pair of free throws. Philly had one more chance. Maxey rushed the ball up, got a screen from Joel Embiid at center court, and fired a three from the ‘E’ on New York logo in the middle of the Madison Square Garden floor. The rest is history.

The Sixers beat the Knicks, 112-106, in overtime to keep their season alive and force a Game 6 in Philadelphia on Thursday. The box score credited Maxey’s shot as a 34-footer, an absolute moonshot in the most clutch moment possible, but that hardly captures its significance. Whether Philly can go on to win the series or not, Maxey saved this era of the Sixers from the worst possible playoff exit, one that naturally would have come with some extremely difficult conversations around superstar center Joel Embiid.

Maxey finished with 46 points and nine assists on 17-of-30 shooting from the field and 7-of-12 shooting from three. Embiid had 19 points on 19 field goal attempts, to go along with nine turnovers. With a loss, Philly is spending the offseason talking about how Embiid always chokes in elimination games, how the rest of the roster isn’t close to good enough, how this franchise just always seems cursed. With one swish, all is forgiven.

How Tyrese Maxey saved the Sixers

Maxey’s clutch shot wasn’t the first time he saved the Sixers — his mere existence might be the only thing holding the Embiid era together at this point. This Sixers season started with James Harden calling Philly executive Daryl Morey a liar and saying he would never play for him again. Harden’s trade request eventually went through after ownership interference on both sides, sending him to the Los Angeles Clippers for role players and future assets.

Maxey was thrust into a starring role at 23 years old. The Sixers knew they had one of the best players in the league in Embiid, but they needed a suitable costar. Maxey turned into exactly that, blossoming into an All-Star, the NBA’s Most Improved Player, and the hope and prayer keeping the lights on for the Sixers.

With his impossible speed, relentless dedication to attacking the paint, and a big smile always plastered on his face, Maxey feels heaven-sent for Philadelphia. That he was delivered with the No. 21 overall pick in the 2020 NBA Draft feels like a miracle in its own right, but nothing about Maxey’s development should really be that surprising. He always felt like a star hiding in plain sight going back to his standout high school career in Texas and his one season starring for John Calipari at Kentucky.

Hindsight is always 20/20, but there didn’t have to be second-guessing with Maxey. Despite shooting only 42.7 percent from the field and 29.2 percent from three in college, it was easy to see the gifts that would one day make Maxey an excellent NBA guard. Here’s what we wrote in an instant draft grades when the Sixers took Maxey at No. 21 overall:

21. Philadelphia 76ers - Tyrese Maxey, G, Kentucky

Grade: A

This feels like the best value pick of the first round. Maxey is a perfect fit in Philadelphia as an aggressive guard who shines attacking the rim and playing physical point of attack defense with a 6’6 wingspan. While he didn’t shoot the ball as well as expected in college, he was a great free throw shooter who should improve from three-point range in time. For now, Maxey’s touch on floaters and his ability to contort his body for tough finishes at the rim will be a nice addition next to Ben Simmons’ oversized playmaking at the four. Maxey deserved to be a lottery pick, but he found a great home on the Sixers. Daryl Morey knows what he’s doing.

Those draft grades of course look like a mixed bag now. I was right about James Wiseman and Jalen Smith being horrible picks in the top-10. I was deeply, disturbingly wrong by giving Killian Hayes an ‘A’ grade for the Pistons. I was fully convinced that LaMelo Ball was the best player in the class, which sure doesn’t look great at this point with Anthony Edwards, Tyrese Haliburton, and Maxey ascending to stardom. Don’t give up on Ball’s future yet, though.

Kentucky never maximized Maxey

While nothing in the draft is ever a certainty, Maxey always felt like he’d be better in the NBA than in college. His team context at Kentucky never did him any favors. The Wildcats simply had no shooting back in the 2019-2020 season, taking only 26.6 percent of their field goal attempts from three-point range, which ranked No. 350 in DI. Instead of using his amazing speed to burn defenders off the dribble, Maxey often ran into a wall near the paint because Kentucky’s spacing was so bad.

Calipari started two non-shooting big men and had a non-shooting guard in Ashton Hagans as an entrenched team leader. Maxey and Immanuel Quickley were a dynamic pairing in the backcourt, but they weren’t put in the best position to succeed as Calipari built his lineups mostly around offensive rebounding and paint protection.

Even with poor percentages, it was always easy to see that Maxey had real touch as a shooter. He shot 83.3 percent from the free throw line. He would hit difficult mid-range floaters like it was nothing.

The shooting didn’t show up immediately in the NBA, but once he made a big leap with his shot, it was never in doubt again. Maxey hit 30.1 percent of his threes as a rookie, then made 42.7 percent of his threes in his second year, and 43.4 percent of his threes in his third year. As he accepted a bigger role with more difficult shot attempts this season after the Harden trade, Maxey made 37.3 on more than eight attempts per game from deep — a tremendous number at that volume.

There are certain players who come out of nowhere in the draft to become NBA stars that truly do register as a shock. Take the two best players in the NBA right now, Nikola Jokic (No. 41 in 2014) and Giannis Antetokounmpo (No. 15 in 2013), as the main examples. Maxey is the opposite. He’s a player who entered his draft cycle at No. 7 on our board, and was still projected as a top-10 pick after the lottery balls were drawn. Others had him much higher than that. He’s a classic case of the NBA overthinking a very good prospect and letting him fall to a smart GM like Morey.

It took a miracle just to get the Sixers that No. 21 overall pick. The Oklahoma City Thunder owed a first round draft pick to Philadelphia that year, but it was top-20 protected. OKC was right on the fringe of paying off that pick thanks to the inspired play of Chris Paul. In the final days of the season, the Thunder earned an impossible win over the Heat when Mike Mascala nailed back-to-back threes in the final seconds. That win gave the No. 21 pick to the Sixers, and is now local legend around Philly.

Regardless of what happens the rest of this series against the Knicks, Sixers fans can take solace in having one of the best young guards in the NBA in Maxey. This is just the start of what’s going to be a brilliant career filled with spectacular moments in the playoffs. His deep three against the Knicks may as well start the highlight reel.