Sixers impressed with Tyrese Maxey’s big Game 6 performance vs. Hawks
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In the NBA Playoffs, teams always need all hands on deck to win in this league. The Philadelphia 76ers got big performances out of Shake Milton in Game 2 and Furkan Korkmaz in Game 3 in order to get a win and in Game 6, it was Tyrese Maxey’s turn.
The rookie hopped off the bench and poured in 16 points and seven rebounds as he gave the team a huge lift in this win. The starters got off to a slow start and they were not able to match Atlanta’s energy and coach Doc Rivers turned to his energetic rookie point guard to keep Philadelphia in it and eventually, helped them win the game.
“The first two games, I thought he struggled,” said Rivers. “They game-planned him, he’s young, you could tell he didn’t know what to do, they were taking him away from the basket. We showed him a bunch of film. I talked to him this morning and I told him you’re going, well I lied because I said you’re going to be the first guy off the bench. We were going to go to a different lineup, but then the fouls got killed us early on.”
The fouls to Tobias Harris early meant that Matisse Thybulle had to come off the bench first before Maxey, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is, Maxey was terrific on Friday and Philadelphia needed all of that to win this game.
“He just had guts out there and he had confidence,” said Harris. “The minute he stepped on that floor, he gave us that boost. He was just playing with that just basically freeness out there. It wasn’t scared of the moment, wasn’t shy at all, got to his spots, just gave us a big boost of energy out there and that helped us.”
It was not only Harris who was in foul trouble early, it was also All-Star Ben Simmons who picked up a couple of fouls. That meant that Maxey had to also run things on that end of the floor in order to help the Sixers get back into this game.
“He was great, defensively and offensively,” said Simmons. “He was big, he made some tough shots, that second group really was big and really kept us in the game.”
Everybody will be focusing on his offensive production, but Maxey did a solid job against Hawks star Trae Young. He is, obviously, not an easy cover and for a rookie to come in and challenge him the way he did, it was impressive for Rivers.
“I actually thought, other than Ben, Tyrese did the best job on Trae, because of his speed,” Rivers added. “I keep talking about him, he struggled in a lot of ways defensively this year, but he keeps working. He keeps watching film with Sam (Cassell). I thought tonight was probably, I know everybody is gonna shine on the offense, but I thought this was the single best defensive night of the season. Just really proud.”
Maxey has been working hard on the defensive end of the floor as it is not an easy thing to play defense at this level against talented scorers like Young. The rookie was able to produce on the offensive end and he also held his own on defense in a huge win.
“I’ve been saying it all year, I have one choice and that’s to stay ready for what the coaching staff tells me to do,” Maxey said. “Today, they told me to go out there and make it tough on him and that’s what I tried to do. He shot it from the logo one time and I looked up when he made and I stood there, I’m like, we’re standing at the logo, he just made that shot. Hats off to him. You just got to make it as hard as you can for him.”
The Sixers will need more of this out of Maxey in Game 7 as Philadelphia looks to keep their season alive again.
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
