By Adam Aaronson

Copyright phillyvoice

Welcome to our Sixers player preview series, where in the weeks leading up to Media Day we will preview the upcoming 2025-26 season for each and every member of the Sixers’ standard roster. For each player, we will pose two key questions about their season before making a prediction.

The pressure is on after a miserable 24-58 campaign last season. After entering a year with championship aspirations and spending multiple months having to tank for the sake of a protected first-round pick, the Sixers have lost any and all benefit of the doubt that their signature season is finally coming.

It is safe to say there is a whole lot of work to do on the Sixers’ end to prove the doubters wrong. Do they have a roster good enough to make it happen?

Up next: Tyrese Maxey, whose fifth NBA season was his most disappointing. Maxey had made a substantial leap in every season of his professional career until the last one, when brutal shooting variance and injuries came along with an outsized role. Maxey’s limitations as a focal point were on full display, even as he took major steps forward on the defensive end of the floor. What can the Sixers expect from Maxey in his sixth NBA season?

SIXERS PLAYER PREVIEWS

Jared McCain | Justin Edwards | VJ Edgecombe | Kyle Lowry

Kelly Oubre Jr. | Johni Broome | Adem Bona | Andre Drummond

Trendon Watford | Eric Gordon | Paul George | Quentin Grimes | Tyrese Maxey

How much will Maxey be asked to do offensively?

Last season, from the outset the answer to this question was way too much. Sixers head coach Nick Nurse has always been consistent with his messaging to Maxey, no matter who else is on the floor: be aggressive, hunt your own shots. Maxey has learned to trust that guidance, and rightfully so; any player with his absurd combination of off-the-dribble burst and pull-up shooting skill should always be encouraged to put defenders on their heels.

It is much easier to adopt that mentality, though, when playing alongside teammates like Joel Embiid and even James Harden. Early on last season, the Sixers had little-to-no secondary scoring to give Maxey a lift. With Embiid and Paul George injured, Maxey carried an offensive workload reminiscent of what Harden handled during his peak days in Houston. Nobody in the NBA came close to playing with the ball in their hands as often as Maxey in the opening weeks of the season, and the Sixers’ star guard floundered.

Maxey’s efficiency, which had always been astoundingly good, went into the tank. A player known for the joy he carries on the floor suddenly was flustered and frustrated. The Sixers were losing games as he continually fired away; defenses loaded up against him and he could not beat them as a playmaker. It is not that a better passer would have shredded those coverages, but Maxey’s lack of balance between his stellar three-level scoring chops and his ability to create for others burned him.

As is the case for Paul George and several other Sixers, Embiid’s availability – or lack thereof – is inextricably linked to Maxey’s production. It is not just because the two players have formed a lethal two-man game over the years as effective as any other in the NBA, but because Embiid’s presence alone provides such a healthy baseline for Maxey, who can become more selective as a scorer and will never be the main focus of an opposing defense.

At the very least, this equation is no longer entirely centered on Embiid. Jared McCain should provide the Sixers significant doses of scoring and bits of playmaking, too. The same can be said for George and, if he eventually re-signs with the team, Quentin Grimes. So even if Embiid is mostly unavailable again, Maxey should have much more help on a regular basis.

Can Maxey become a more versatile defender positionally?

There was once a time during which the Sixers had zero traditional guard play. If Grimes ends up returning on a multi-year deal, one would be able to argue that the four most valuable assets in the organization are all guards. No. 3 overall pick VJ Edgecombe is joining a group that should include Maxey at the top, a returning Grimes and McCain, whose 23 games as a rookie were electrifying.

The Sixers have too much talent concentrated at the two guard positions to not come up with avenues to allot them more than just the 96 minutes that come from the pair of spots. That means, almost certainly, head coach Nick Nurse will have to devise viable three-guard lineups. It is something President of Basketball Operations Daryl Morey acknowledged in July:

“Again, probably more of a Nick questions, but I do know in my conversations with Nick, I mean, Nick does a good job, he’s generally going to put the best players out there, and those four guys we think will be likely four of our top players on the team. Coach Nurse is very creative, I would expect he would find ways to get all those guys pretty heavy minutes, assuming health and assuming VJ plays as well as we hope in his first year. Again, expectations are super high on VJ – as they should be, we’re very excited about him – but I will say, it is super rare for a first-year player to come in and play on a team that has championship aspirations, so trying to temper them a little bit with VJ and give him a little space to maybe have some bumps in the road this year. But I do think in our best version of our team, if we can get Quentin back, all four of those guys will be playing pretty heavy minutes and Coach Nurse will have to use creativity to figure out how to best utilize them.”

The best defensive alignment the Sixers can manage under those circumstances will be Maxey playing alongside Edgecombe and Grimes. But Edgecombe is far and away the least developed of the quartet on offense; his suspect ball-handling ability at the NBA level may prevent him from taking advantage of certain offensive opportunities in those lineups.

On offense, the upside of a Maxey-McCain duo is incredibly tantalizing. If those two smaller guards and Grimes can all play together at once without being completely obliterated on the defensive end of the floor, the Sixers could enjoy outstanding results on offense. But with poor length and middling athleticism, it is extremely difficult to imagine McCain ever defending above his size. He will primarily guard point guards in the NBA, but Maxey’s defensive leap last season came at that spot.

However, Maxey possesses the outlier athleticism and length McCain is lacking. He also bulked up significantly ahead of last season, and the added muscle helped him fight through screens. Can he guard up a bit more often, perhaps splitting his minutes between point guards and shooting guards? If so, there is a real runway to play McCain more, optimizing offensive output of all parties involved. Maxey and McCain are the most gifted offensive players among the Sixers’ young core; finding out if they make up a compatible duo should be a top priority.

It remains evident that Maxey would be miscast as a full-time primary scoring option, but improved personnel around him throughout the season helps him get closer to his usual pristine efficiency marks. Maxey shows enough while guarding up for the idea of a long-term partnership with McCain to not seem like a complete pipe dream.

Embiid very well might never play as consistently or as well as he did during the life of Maxey’s four-year rookie contract; it would be at least slightly unreasonable to expect Maxey’s shooting percentages to remain comically impressive as they often were during Embiid’s peak years. But the circumstances surrounding him last year were about as disastrous and unforgiving as humanly possible. Even without a healthy Embiid, though, Maxey should be in a much better environment this season.

The enormity of Maxey and McCain proving to be a usable long-term duo has become one of the most underrated storylines in the Sixers universe right now. Their offensive skills and styles match beautifully, and Maxey establishing that he can handle bigger guards even in spurts would go a long way toward enabling greater visibility of that upside.

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Will the Sixers ever have an elite defense while starting Maxey and McCain? No. That could be their backcourt for years to come and the team might never peak beyond average or slightly better. But given the position the Sixers find themselves in now, it is difficult to find any roster-building method wiser than experimenting with all sorts of unique guard combinations and seeing what sticks.