‘Prince of the City’: Why Tyrese Maxey, the Sixers, and Philly are a ‘perfect fit’

Maxey is beloved in Philly. That adoration, though, would have never sustained with this passionate fan base had those endearing qualities not been accompanied by Maxey’s sharp on-court ascension.

Sixers guard Tyrese Maxey on the court during a game against the Miami Heat during Game 6 of their second-round playoff series.Read moreYONG KIM / Staff Photographer

by Gina Mizell

Published Oct. 17, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET

A chant of “Max-ey! Max-ey!” followed the 76er with that last name as he trudged down the Citizens Bank Park steps, high-fiving Phillies fans before joining the television crew broadcasting from the front rows of the left-field bleachers.

Ruben Amaro Jr. was the first to express his delighted surprise, exclaiming, “Oh, Tyrese is here! That’s awesome!” when he spotted Maxey, who on this night had traded his Sixers gear for a backward red Phillies cap.

John Kruk, meanwhile, was downright giddy. The former Phillies outfielder and longtime color commentator — who shared that he watches every Sixers game with his high-school-age daughter — peppered Maxey with questions on lighthearted topics ranging from his basketball idol (Dwyane Wade), to potential breakout teammates (Paul Reed) to if “Here Come the Sixers” is his favorite song (“Of course!”).

“Sixers fans don’t ‘like’ … we love Tyrese Maxey,” Kruk gushed.

“I love y’all, too,” Maxey said. “It’s a mutual feeling.”

The late-August exchange with Kruk, a man who has spent his professional life around famous athletes, embodied the way Maxey and Philadelphia have so warmly embraced each other.

Maxey quickly recognized a commonality between his own relentless routine, and the way “everybody here [in Philly] that goes to games or that I see around town, they work extremely hard for what they have. Like, extremely hard for what they have.”

Combine Maxey’s diligence with a fearless playing style, focus on team success, and joyfully charismatic personality, and the 21-year-old guard has already become the most universally loved Sixer and one of the city’s most popular athletes. His mother, Denyse, has even playfully nicknamed her son the “Prince of the City” — no shade to the fresh one who moved to Bel Air, of course — because of the way people have taken Maxey in “like a young son.”

That adoration, though, would have never sustained with this passionate (and sometimes ruthless) fan base had those endearing qualities not been accompanied by Maxey’s sharp on-court ascension.

Following a breakout 2021-22 season, Maxey continued to dazzle during exhibition play with his efficiently potent scoring and blazing speed. Even better, Maxey says he is as comfortable and confident as he has ever been as a pro, thanks to a clear vision of his role that was impossible to construct amid the uncertainty entering his first two seasons.

Challenging for a spot on the All-Star team feels attainable. So does evolving into the second-best player on a championship contender. So does eventually being remembered as an all-time Philly athlete.

In less than two calendar years, Philly and the Sixers have offered Maxey an environment to thrive, which sets him up to take another leap in his third NBA season.

“It’s a perfect fit,” Maxey recently told The Inquirer. “What I say about the NBA is you’ve got to be really, really, really good — and really, really, really lucky. I was blessed to ‘fall’ in the draft to a team that is a contender, because all my life, I’ve been on winning teams. … And I was blessed to fall into a spot where I was able to play.

“[This is] a group that believes in me: Sam [Cassell], Coach Doc [Rivers], the organization and my teammates, as well. I just try to go out and perform for them.”

Whenever Denyse travels from the Maxey family home in the Dallas suburb of Garland to Philly, she keeps a keen eye on the working class. She believes that is at the root of the gravitation between the city and her son.

Maxey grew up in a full house, with his parents, three sisters, and two grandmothers. The adults worked in labor-of-love fields ranging from education to coaching to teaching Sunday school. He went to public schools and recognizes the times his parents sacrificed to buy him new sneakers or drove long distances to AAU tournaments because it was more affordable.

“I was trying to figure that out, like, why is Tyrese so comfortable?” Denyse Maxey told The Inquirer last week. “Even though it’s not the South, it’s on the East Coast … That’s all he’s been around is working people, working hard and being passionate about their city, their favorite sport and the things that they like to do. That’s all he’s ever seen.”

But it’s possible Maxey would not be a Sixer if not for the pandemic’s onset.

Early COVID-19 preventative measures wiped out the 2020 NCAA Tournament, which would have showcased Maxey on a Kentucky team with title aspirations. The virus then limited in-person workouts and interactions with NBA teams throughout an elongated waiting period until the draft, while the league finished its season inside a bubble.

Sixers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey had only watched video on Maxey after joining the organization in November 2020, but credited general manager Elton Brand and the scouting department with excellent research. Maxey was ranked about 10th on their big board, Morey said, making them “surprised” and “thrilled” he was still available at No. 21.

Maxey acknowledges his only perception of Philly before moving here was the city’s dark history of violence. Denyse, however, was well aware of the visceral passion for sports, initially thinking, “Son, you better not mess this up. I don’t know what these fans are going to do.”

It took time for Maxey to be formally introduced to those supporters. His first few months in town were before COVID-19 vaccines were widely available, keeping fans out of the Wells Fargo Center stands and Maxey out of public places. Much of Maxey’s work on his game also occurred in private while playing sparingly for the bulk of his rookie season.

Yet Maxey’s uptick in minutes down the stretch of the season coincided with the Sixers’ increase in fans allowed in the building.

On Kentucky coach John Calipari’s visit during the playoffs, he said at least 20 fans stopped him to say, “We love your kid.” So did an arena employee, who said Maxey consistently went out of his way to say hello and thanks for what he does for the organization. When a full-capacity crowd finally arrived for Game 5 of the first round against the Washington Wizards, Maxey was taken aback by the feverous standing cheers he received when he entered for the first time.

Yet Maxey’s most powerful memory from that game was running into a valet he saw almost daily near where he lived in Center City, who told Maxey had he had saved up all his tips to be able to buy a ticket to the game.

“That just kind of connected with me,” Maxey said. “... It’s just really cool to see this city be as tough as they are and really cherish everything that they have.”

Since then, the bond has only strengthened. And not just because of the charming viral video of Maxey singing “Clap your hands, everybody!” — the opening line of the beloved “Here Come the Sixers” victory song — into the microphone at the start of a January postgame press conference.

Maxey seized his opportunity when the holdout of Ben Simmons — who was Maxey’s friend before they were teammates because they are both represented by Klutch Sports — pushed him into the starting point guard job.

He flashed his ability as an explosive and crafty scorer off drives and in transition, sometimes carrying the Sixers offense while the team navigated an early COVID outbreak that hit stars Joel Embiid and Tobias Harris. He became even more dangerous after the Sixers acquired perennial All-Star James Harden in a blockbuster trade with the Brooklyn Nets, burying 48% of his three-pointers during the regular season’s final 24 games and remaining a dangerous attacking option to complement the Embiid-Harden pick-and-roll.

When Maxey scored 38 points in Game 1 of the Sixers’ first-round playoff series against the Toronto Raptors, “Max-ey!” chants rang through the arena.

“Nobody calls me by my first name,” Maxey joked.

Finding this home within the Philly community, interestingly, materialized during a period when Maxey lost his actual South Jersey home in an accidental Christmas Eve house fire. All family members gathered there for the holiday escaped safely, but it left most of his possessions destroyed.

He lived in the Center City Four Seasons hotel for about a month, then at the Franklin Residences until the end of the season in May. He found a new house over the summer and settled into a “great routine” with the help of his mom, who insisted that all furniture be in place by the start of training camp. The fire recently crossed Maxey’s mind while driving to the Sixers’ public scrimmage at the G League-affiliate Delaware Blue Coats’ facility in Wilmington, because the Range Rover he took to the same event last year “blew up” in the blaze.

“I had to continue on with my life,” Maxey said. “It is what it is.”

The NBA’s first full offseason since 2019 also allowed Maxey to personally connect with people in town.

While on that Phillies’ broadcast, he said that he would like to hit a Union game next — and showed up to bang the drum five days later. Also in August, he hosted his first local youth camp — appropriately named the 1% Skills Camp, after one of his go-to mantras — at Penn Charter. Last week, he hit the Flyers’ opening night (his first hockey game), and planned to attend the Eagles’ Sunday Night Football game against the rival Dallas Cowboys (though he slyly refused to reveal who he would root for, an acknowledgment those hometown roots still run deep).

Sometimes, those interactions are more spontaneous and what one would expect from a “goofy” 21-year-old.

Denyse laughed while recalling a time when Tyrese rolled down the backseat window at a stop light to sing along with the music playing in the car next to theirs, and the group of guys exclaiming “That’s Tyrese Maxey!” when they realized with whom they were jamming.

“At the end of the day, we’re all human,” Maxey said. “We’re all people. … You never know what’s going on in [someone’s] life. You never know how that can affect [their] day.”

Perhaps what makes Maxey even easier to latch onto is that everybody knows he still has oodles of untapped potential.

After the Sixers’ Game 6 loss to the Miami Heat — one of two times Rivers said he has seen Maxey visibly unhappy — Maxey vowed that the acronym “NGE,” or “not good enough” would be his offseason motto.

He worked out with Cassell and skill-development coach Spencer Rivers on making “live” reads with the ball in his hands, and played some intense one-on-one matchups with Harden in Los Angeles. He upped his weightlifting regimen to better finish through contact at the basket and fight through screens on the defensive end. He has improved at spacing the floor, allowing teammates to find him for open looks.

Assistant coach Dave Joerger said Maxey could still be even more demonstrative in demanding the ball on outlets, attributing the occasional deference to his affable demeanor. Making plays for others when he slices into the lane and the defense collapses is another natural next step.

For now, though, Rivers wants Maxey to remain an “ultra-aggressive” scorer, as evidenced by his team-high 17.3 points per game on 52.2% shooting from the floor and 55.6% from long range in four preseason games (percentages that were eye-poppingly higher before Wednesday’s 3-for-13 outing).

“He should never lose confidence,” Rivers said. “He sees the ball go in so much.”

The scene at that scrimmage in Wilmington left Tyrese’s father, Tyrone, flabbergasted. While sitting alongside perennial All-Stars Embiid and Harden on the bench, more fans clamored for his son’s autograph.

A crowd followed while Tyrese’s parents escorted him to his car. Tyrese kept stopping. Kept signing.

“That’s what you get for him being such a nice kid,” a security staffer told Tyrone and Denyse.

So nice, yet so perfect for the Sixers and for Philly.

“Nothing was given to them. Nothing was given to me,” Maxey said. “I went out and took everything I got.”