I Am $500 Positive That Tyrese Maxey Will Be an All-Star in the Next Two Years

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Andrew Unterberger is a famous writer who invented the nickname 'Sauce Castillo' and is now writing for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the 'If Not, Pick Will Convey As Two Second-Rounders' section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard. 

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It was basically Maxey Week on the Ricky pod last month after the shorthanded win over Miami -- a performance special enough to contend for official The Tyese Maxey Game honors, though there are now so many of those that it's clear no one game can really carry that designation anymore. Mike claimed that Tyrese could be a top 30 player someday. Andrew Sharp, brought on to guest-host, said he could be a fringe All-Star. It was pretty fun moony-eyeing over our second-year, 21st-picked player -- but there was a problem with all of it, and one that's only gotten clearer in the weeks since: It wasn't nearly effusive enough.

Tyrese Maxey is going to be an All-Star next season. I've been fairly certain of this since the Miami game, though I've suspected it for longer. He averaged nearly 18 points a game this year and ranked third among all eligible shooters in three-point percentage (43%) -- and that's with it basically taking until the last month of the regular season for both Tyrese and the Sixers to actually wrap their heads around just how good he is. (Daryl thinks Maxey still doesn't totally get it, he may very well be right.) Next year, he will do more with even more opportunity, particularly as Harden and Embiid downshift to conserve themselves for the postseason and/or miss time with injury. He will score more, he will defend stronger, he will learn how to be more of a playmaker than others -- all while the Sixers likely win more games as a result. He will lead my mother, who has referred to him as her third son for a solid year-plus now, to officially draw up the adoption papers.

If you had any remaining doubt just how much he already means to the Sixers, it was likely put to bed by his electric first two games in this Toronto series, beginning with a jaw-dropping 38-point game one performance that basically had the "oh, it's like that now" impact of Jack Harlow outstreaming Adele and Harry Styles with his latest single. But I was maybe even more impressed with his Game Two performance, a filling in the blanks 23-9-8 performance that included a shot that may end up being the most important of this first round: An open three in the fourth quarter with the Raptors surging to cut the Philly lead to 11, and the Sixers getting so tight with memories of last year's Hawks series that you could practically taste the Shirley Temples that Embiid was sweating out. I would have only trusted one Sixer to hit that shot in that moment. It was the guy who took it. And now the Sixers are up a resounding 2-0 on a Raptors team I thought for sure we'd have to settle for a miserable split against.

I'm certain that Maxey will be an All-Star next year -- though I do have to allow for at least the slightest possibility of it being a Sophomore Year Ben Simmons situation where he's obviously worthy but voters wanna make him wait another year while they reward some Joe Johnson 2.0 type for the sixth time in seven seasons. But I'm absolutely positive he'll be one in the next two years, by the time his rookie contract is up. And I'm willing to put my money where my chest-puffing is.

When I was a teenager, I developed the concept of being "$5 positive" about an assertion made -- a way to express confidence in the rightness of your prediction or statement of fact in discussion with friends and family. The way it worked was that if you told someone you were $5 positive about something and you turned out to be wrong, you would owe them $5. But it's different than making a $5 bet with the other party, because they don't have to wager anything in return: If they were wrong, they wouldn't lose anything, except for maybe the argument. Most people find this concept stupid at first explanation -- why put any amount of money on the line when there's no hope of winning anything in return? -- but many end up ultimately seeing the utility in it. Sometimes, you just really, really want to express how right you feel you are about something. And if your belief is important enough to you, it's worth the financial risk.

Obviously, $5 doesn't have the same weight as an employed adult as it did when I was a teenager, and it probably wouldn't be particularly persuasive to you if you saw it in this headline. (Neither likely would $25, the amount I offered to my skeptical Nets fan co-worker earlier this week when making similar claims to him.) So for the purposes of this article, I will scale up accordingly, and I will say that I am $500 positive about Tyrese being named an All-Star by the end of his rookie contract. That means that if I'm wrong, I'll give y'all the $500 -- $50 each to 10 of you, though I may ask you to give some portion of that to a charity of your choosing so I won't feel like a total asshole for doing this. Moot point though, of course, because I won't be wrong.

If you want to get in on this, just tweet #MaxeyNotAnAllStar at both the Ricky Twitter account and me, and we'll either go with the ten first responders or draw ten names from the pool of them if we get a bunch. If he doesn't make an All-Star team in 2023 or 2024, you get a free $50 for you and your charity in roughly 22 months. (This is entirely [Ben Stein voice] my money we're talking about; Spike had no idea I was doing this until he saw this hed as an email subject in his inbox Tuesday morning, and I wouldn't want to rope any of our lovely sponsors into it anyway.) And if he does make an All-Star team in either year, I won't give you that free cash, but you still don't have to do anything. (You may get somewhat Retweet Armageddon'd for your participation, though. Respectfully.)

Obligatory terms and conditions: First off, this is all health-dependent -- if Tyrese misses 15 games or more before All-Stars are named in either year, deal's off. It's also All-Star-Game-actually-happening-dependent -- if for whatever reason (COVID, labor dispute, Nick Elam getting canceled) the ASG gets pulled in either year, deal's off. And yes, it counts if he's not originally named a starter or reserve but eventually grabbed as an injury replacement; no one remembers about that long enough to asterisk it for more than a week or two anyway. Iif I think of more shit to stipulate between now and next ASG voting I also reserve the right to add onto this -- this is my dumbass idea, and unless you want to put up $50 yourself on the other side here I'll see it through as I see fit.

But yeah, that's all. If you think getting $50 for nothing is a prospect that still might appeal to you in 2024, tweet that hashtag at us. Of course, if you agree with me that this is a foregone conclusion, and think the prospect of maybe winning that $50 isn't worth the risk of being potentially exposed as a Tyrese doubter, then don't do it. Regardless, I'm willing to put my freelance paycheck on the line to show y'all how positive I am of this, to make sure I'm being properly effusive in my ravings, and to simply let my little brother know how much I love him. After the last two games, you couldn't say he isn't worth it.