Tyrese Maxey is ready for his moment, with or without James Harden

Tyrese Maxey ran pick-and-roll after pick-and-roll inside a Dallas-area gym, drilling how to react to the “tag” help defender. If that player shifted over from the perimeter to stop the big man, Maxey zipped a pass to childhood teammate Chris Harris in the corner for a three-pointer. If the defender stayed with Harris, Maxey delivered a pocket pass from his hip to the roller mimicking Joel Embiid.

Maxey knew that sharpening this muscle memory and execution might be a requirement months before the James Harden saga’s latest turn, when the disgruntled point guard left the 76ers last week while still desiring a trade. That’s why Maxey this summer recruited pals such as Harris, who had just finished his college basketball career at Oklahoma State, to the Mark Cuban Heroes Basketball Center near their hometown. Maxey wanted to focus on situational three-on-three and four-on-four work with real-life moving bodies, instead of individualized drills against air that often populate offseason sessions.

“I know where guys want the ball,” Maxey recently told The Inquirer. “You know reads. You know passes. Once you get comfortable and you get in rhythm, it’s kind of easy.”

Now entering his fourth NBA season, Maxey has already proved himself as an electrifying scorer while attacking the basket and shaking himself free to fire shots from deep range. His stint as a primary ballhandler during Ben Simmons’ holdout two years ago ignited his rapid ascension, before Harden’s arrival in a blockbuster deadline trade allowed Maxey to thrive as a shooting guard.

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Now, Maxey is again likely to spearhead the Sixers offense during a crucial 2023-24 season. Conventional wisdom says demonstrating he also can be a consistent playmaker for teammates — while still putting up 20 shots per game, as new coach Nick Nurse has stipulated — will take his game to the next level. Embiid, the NBA’s reigning Most Valuable Player, told Maxey as much at the beginning of the summer, vowing, “If you learn how to make those pocket passes, you’re going to be an All-Star. I’m going to make sure you’re an All-Star.”

Maxey noted that he has readied himself for this opportunity for his whole life, including while playing in multiple unorthodox backcourt situations. His father, Tyrone, is more demonstrative in describing his son’s potential, proclaiming, “I trained him to be a point guard.” Finishing Friday’s preseason finale against the Atlanta Hawks with 12 assists — more than Maxey has totaled in any regular-season game of his NBA career — could be evidence of how he will orchestrate the Sixers offense this season.

So forget Nurse’s Plan A if Harden never plays again for the Sixers, and Plan B if he decides to return. Maxey assured he is “ready for Plan C, D, all the way down to Z.”

“My confidence is really high,” he added. “I feel like, mentally, I prepared for whatever it is.”

A 4-year-old Maxey left father Tyrone irritated during one of his first organized games. Despite playing up with 7-year-olds in a local recreational league, Tyrese was already the team’s best dribbler. But he would never — never, Tyrone emphasized — pass the ball.

“Nobody’s going to want to play with you,” Tyrone recalled telling his son during a phone conversation with The Inquirer last week.

That this irked Dad made sense, given that he played point guard for Washington State in the early 1990s. And Tyrone wanted to instill the same skill set and mentality in his son, starting with not turning the ball over.

As part of a comprehensive training regimen, Tyrone set up chairs on the court to signify where Maxey needed to take his defender with the ball, before coming off the imaginary screen shoulder-to-shoulder and executing either a pocket or longer skip pass. They also built his court vision through extensive film study, beginning when Maxey was a second grader and Tyrone wanted to rewatch a game immediately after a tournament.

Maxey idolized Dwyane Wade as a child, but also studied Allen Iverson and Kyrie Irving as score-first point guards, along with Jrue Holiday’s passing and Chris Paul’s pick-and-roll mastery. Meanwhile, Maxey developed into a speedy ballhandler with a blossoming floater and wicked spin move “that no one could stop” to get to the rim, Harris said. Although Maxey was an explosive scorer first — he amassed 46 points in a heartbreaking Texas state semifinal loss to end his South Garland High School career — he also averaged 3.6 assists per game as a senior and was characterized as a five-star combo guard by recruiting services.

Maxey dreamed of playing for Kentucky and coach John Calipari. During his one season in Lexington, though, Maxey joined an unconventional, three-guard starting lineup that included future New York Knick Immanuel Quickley.

Calipari compared Maxey to fellow former Wildcat Jamal Murray — a multidimensional scorer who played on and off the ball in college and now stars for the Denver Nuggets. The coach credited Tyrone with giving his son experience in a dribble-drive system similar to what Kentucky ran. But as essentially the third option to initiate offense, Maxey needed to play off pin-down screens to receive the ball for a shot.

In his final college game, though, Maxey was thrust into the lead guard role against Florida when Ashton Hagans missed the game for disciplinary reasons and Quickley fouled out with about nine minutes to play. Maxey missed 10 of 11 shots in that game but totaled seven assists and one turnover while playing 39 of 40 minutes, helping the Wildcats rally from 18 points down.

Once he was drafted by the Sixers in 2020, Maxey knew playing alongside a dominant big man like Embiid would be an adjustment. While working with renowned personal trainer Chris Johnson, the pick-and-roll again became an emphasis. They drilled on understanding defensive positioning and calls. And footwork while navigating the paint. And identifying when to elevate for a runner and when to distribute.

Maxey played sporadically for most of his rookie season while Simmons held point guard duties until a stunning Game 7 loss to Atlanta in the 2021 playoffs. A messy divorce between Simmons and the team then propelled an inexperienced Maxey into that lead guard spot the next season. Although he had spent the summer studying where teammates preferred the ball, today Maxey acknowledges, “mentally, I was not prepared” for what accompanied that responsibility.

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To an outsider, that may seem like a harsh self-assessment, considering that stretch is when Maxey announced himself as a rising star by averaging 16.9 points and 4.6 assists (and only 1.2 turnovers) before Harden’s debut after the All-Star break. But internally, Maxey felt passive, so focused on feeding Embiid that he forgot that his burst with the ball in his hands is what unlocked his teammates.

“I was just trying to maintain, honestly,” Maxey recalled last week. “I was just trying to keep afloat. I wasn’t being myself.”

Harden’s arrival sent Simmons to the Brooklyn Nets and moved Maxey back off the ball. Seemingly overnight, he became a deadly shooter while still utilizing his blazing speed to finish at the basket. His numbers increased again last season, to 20.3 points per game on a superb 43.4% shooting from three-point distance, despite missing about a month with a broken foot.

And every day, Maxey observed how Harden used his IQ and skill to personalize passes to teammates while leading the NBA with 10.7 assists per game in 2022-23 — and experimented with more creative dishes during practice. Maxey also was coached by former point guards Sam Cassell and Doc Rivers, who stressed setting up plays rather than simply running them.

Then uncertainty surrounded Harden’s status for the 2023-24 season. He could have opted out of the last year of his contract and signed with another team as a free agent. Instead, Harden opted in, requested a trade, called president of basketball operations Daryl Morey “a liar” when it went unfulfilled, briefly returned to the Sixers, and is now absent.

Maxey already had a plan.

While crafting his son’s intricate childhood workout routine, Tyrone now wishes he had coaxed more in-person helpers as defenders and teammates to simulate how Maxey would need to read the floor as a passer in various situations.

Tyrese — who already has a long-established reputation for his unwavering work ethic — rectified that this summer by gathering his buddies in Dallas. He also spent time in Los Angeles with the robust staff of personal trainer Drew Hanlen, a longtime Embiid confidant. Maxey appreciated the drills that forced him to change pace, and that pass-catchers would only fire the shot if the ball was on target.

By the end of the summer, Harris noticed that Maxey was “not just going with his first instinct” while assessing the defense.

“He comes off the ball screen and reads the whole floor and knows exactly where he’s going to make the pass,” Harris said, “instead of just coming off and going super fast.”

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The Sixers, though, do not want Maxey to overhaul the qualities that have already made him such a promising young player.

“Forward” has been Nurse’s initial buzzword with Maxey. That means grabbing more rebounds and shifting from defense to offense, instead of slowing the pace or waiting for teammates. And using early pick-and-roll sets to pull help defenders and create openings for him to drive to the rim. And taking those 20 shots per game.

That, in turn, is going to create the opportunities to facilitate for teammates, Nurse and Maxey believe.

“I just want him to be,” Nurse said, “not a little bit more — a lot more — aggressive with his chances that he takes.”

Added Maxey: “If I’m not being aggressive to score, the defense is able to fan out. Then, shoot, at that point, you have no advantage. For me, being a threat offensively to score the ball — get downhill, get floaters, get runners, get pull-ups, shoot the three-ball well and then get to the paint as well — that helps me open the other guys.”

Maxey now feels more comfortable speaking up during practice, joking that he is “getting old” as a soon-to-be 23-year-old. Embiid said he is ready to help Maxey through stretches when defenses adjust their schemes to stop the ball. Tyrone still sends his son reminders about how to manipulate an opponent to “pass open” a teammate, along with quick film clips with examples of when he should have given the ball up as Embiid barreled down the lane with his defender pinned.

But nothing will replace “learning on the job,” as Tyrone describes it, of game repetitions at the highest level.

Those started during the preseason, culminating in Friday’s 12-assist effort. Maxey slung the ball to outside shooters, helping propel De’Anthony Melton to 29 points on 6-of-10 shooting from three-point range. He dropped a bounce pass to Paul Reed for a reverse dunk. And he lofted an alley-oop feed to Embiid, who after the game quipped that if Maxey “wants to lead the league in assists, he can.”

One possession, though, looked particularly familiar to Harris. Maxey drove on the same side as Melton, who set up in the corner. When Melton’s defender sank too far in to help on Maxey, he kicked the ball back out to his teammate to bury the long-range shot.

It was not Maxey’s most complicated read of the night. But he had brought it from the Dallas gym to an NBA floor.

“We worked on that, for sure,” Harris said. “ … Now that he’s going to have the ball in his hands a lot more, he’s going to be able to show the world, ‘Hey, this is what I’ve been doing. This is what I know exactly how to do.’”