Let Tyrese Maxey and Isaiah Joe Stink
This year -- this portion of it, anyway -- has to be first and foremost about getting the team in shape to be ready to move if and when Daryl's ship comes in.
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Tyrese Maxey bricking a wide-open three certainly wasn't the main reason, or even among the five biggest reasons, that the Sixers lost in New York last night. They were out-shot and out-executed for most of the game, without receiving the kind of performance from their stars -- star? -- that might otherwise make up the difference in such an outing. But certainly, there was no time the game's result felt as inevitable or inexorable as when, having just made a layup to cut what was once a 27-point lead to 14 with under six minutes to go, Maxey got kicked the ball just beyond the top of the arc -- with no defender in close enough range to even feign a contest -- and he missed, in a convincing enough way you thought his luck the next time around probably wouldn’t be that much better.
Tyrese Maxey and Isaiah Joe struggling to start the season -- the former posting numbers but struggling to score, distribute or lead efficiently, the latter still yet to find the bottom of the net even once -- should be no surprise to Sixers fans. Hell, outside of Joel Embiid being awesome, Furkan Korkmaz being inconsistent and Andre Drummond being ridiculous, there might not have been a more predictable player outcome to the earliest stages of this year of Sixers ball than these second-year dudes -- both of whom had absurdly high hopes foisted upon them after over-indexing in the prior postseason and/or preseason -- coming up short of general Process Truster expectation. It makes sense that it should be the case, and that it would continue to be the case. What wouldn't really make sense is if we treated it like a problem that needed immediate addressing and solving.
Yes, it would have been nice if Maxey had been absolutely conscienceless from Day One, launching triples off the catch and off the dribble with such confidence that they seemed destined to go into the hoop at least two out of every five times. It would've been particularly helpful if his pick-and-roll chemistry with Embiid was instantly at Shaq and Penny levels, not only fully weaponizing their own most potent offensive skills, but opening things up for the rest of the team in the process. And it would've been absolutely ideal if his Point Guardiness was so transparent and brilliant right away that the TNT folks didn't even remember to bring up the guy on the roster whose file photo is currently missing.
And yes, it would have been marvelous if Isaiah Joe's insanely hot shooting carried over from Games Negative One Through Four to Games Actual One Through Four. Or even if a couple of the baskets that had gone down during his twine-tearing preseason run began to rim out over time, but that the flashes of his overall plus-playmaking from the wing possession and hard-nosed focus and intensity on the defensive end remained. Anything that essentially continued making the case that Process Trusters had begun to argue even before this October: that our Head Doctor not giving Joe serious minutes and a locked-down rotation spot this year would be absolute malpractice.
Neither player has given the people what they wanted, and I wouldn't necessarily expect that to turn around all that soon. Maybe it won't at all this season; maybe Maxey is a longer-term pro project than we give him credit for, or Joe is still a year or two away from being able to hold his own at the highest level. But there's no way to responsibly come to that conclusion a week-plus into the regular season, and even if there was, I don't see an advantage for the Sixers in rushing to do so -- beyond perhaps winning a couple more regular season games that should barely even be registering as a priority for them this autumn.
For all the good and bad we've seen from this team through four games, one thing should be fairly clear: This particular Sixers squad is not competing for the championship this season. There's no reason why they should be; last year's Sixers squad was convincingly outed as the ironest of iron pyrite once the Hawks really began to chip away at their core. This year, the only major thing about them that's different is that one of the team's key players is MIA, leaving a him-shaped hole on the roster without making room for anyone else to come and fill it. Addition by subtraction is a real thing, but given how not-that-close to true contention the team proved to be last year, that'd be a tough equation to balance out to our liking simply by adding one minus on our side.
That's a shame, of course; I like competing for championships as much as the next guy -- or maybe I don't, since I seem to keep writing articles like this calling for them not to worry about holding their own at the highest level this year. But regardless, it just doesn't seem like a realistic top goal with the way our roster has been compromised, which could be looked at as both a huge bummer and a major opportunity for this team. After all, the Sixers' squad is in an unusual position of being both built around a relatively win-now core and also boasting a set of impressive, high-upside young players in bad need of real development. Most seasons, the former would get the obvious priority, but with the team still in limbo from a standings standpoint until they figure out exactly what to do with the guy who might not be mentally equipped to play for the home team at the Center again, they can afford to lean on the latter instead.
And man, this team fucking needs Maxey and Joe to be legit. The guys who we've seen the two of them be over the past 15 months are close to exactly what this team needs, particularly in No. 25's long-term absence -- the point guard who can both make his own shot and create for others out of thin air, and the three-and-D wing with enough playmaking IQ to not be a complete ball-stopper, both young and on team-friendly contracts for the foreseeable future. Them not panning out for Philly at this point... well, you'd hate to call it catastrophic, since most of the time the 21st and 49th picks in the draft don't pan out, at least not like that. But it'd make Daryl's job in fixing the team with one megatrade masterstroke just that much harder, and maybe mean he'd still be one or two big moves away even after such a seismic swap went down. If there's any way on God and Sam Hinkie's red-white-and-blue Earth to turn Tyrese and Isaiah into the players we want them to be, it behooves us to find it.
So yeah. Let 'em stink for as long they need to this year. Let us suffer as a result. You want Joel to win every game he possibly can, especially as he plays through any number of maladies and decades of both personal and inherited franchise trauma, but even he has to know the team isn't there this season -- and as much as it probably stings for him to have come so close to winning the MVP last year and still finish a GP-limited second, it's just not wise to let him spend a second straight year primarily in pursuit of that. This year -- this portion of it, anyway -- has to be first and foremost about getting the team in shape to be ready to move if and when Daryl's ship comes in. And having Maxey and Joe both as real rotation guys, possible trade pieces and true trade leverage is the best, easiest, and most practical way to make that happen. There's a considerable chance it never quite happens with either or both to our satisfaction, but it's worth potentially strangling the life out of this season to try to squeeze that out of them.
And really, is it so bad if we lose some more games in the meantime, maybe end up with no home-court advantage in the playoffs, or even have to scrap our way to remain in the postseason picture? We won all we needed to last year to get us in position to cha-cha slide our way to the finals, and look at how much that helped. Winning simply for winning's sake has never been the name of the game for this era of Sixers' basketball -- maybe a little old-school productive losing is what we need to get this team back on the right karmic track anyway. We haven't gone too soft for that over the past four years, have we?