Sixers star Tyrese Maxey expected to miss a couple of weeks with hamstring injury

LOS ANGELES — Tyrese Maxey will be sidelined for a couple of weeks with a right hamstring strain, an MRI on Thursday confirmed.

The 76ers guard felt hamstring tightness during the 110-98 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers on Wednesday at the Intuit Dome.

He played the entire third quarter and appeared limited while missing all three of his shots. He did not return in the fourth.

”There’s no specific play,” coach Nick Nurse said. “It just got a little tight in the third quarter. And he obviously mentions it, and we take him out. ... But there was no specific play that he’s aware of.”

Maxey finished the game with 12 points on 5-for-13 shooting — including 1 of 6 on three-pointers — in 31 minutes, 34 seconds. He is the league leader in minutes played at 39.7 per game.

”He’s trying to stay positive,“ Ricky Council IV said to The Inquirer about Maxey. “Nobody wants to be injured. He wants to win games. He wants to win the championship. So he’s just staying patient.”

With Maxey sidelined, Kyle Lowry will move into the starting lineup as the point guard. Reggie Jackson will move into the rotation. Nurse said two-way player Jeff Dowtin probably will be in the mix, as well, to have another point guard available.

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The Sixers are determined to take a careful approach with the injury. They have recent experience with that type of injury after former Sixer Nico Batum went down last season. The forward returned too soon and reinjured his hamstring.

Maxey is the Sixers All-Star to miss time this season. Paul George sat out the first five games of the season with a bone bruise in his left knee. Meanwhile, Joel Embiid has yet to play. The 7-foot-2 center was sidelined all preseason and for the first six games of the season for what the team called left knee injury management.

Now healthy, Embiid is in the midst of a three-game suspension for shoving Inquirer columnist Marcus Hayes on Saturday. He sat out Wednesday’s loss to the Clippers and will not play against the Los Angeles Lakers on Friday or the Charlotte Hornets on Sunday.

The Sixers (1-6) are in last place in the Eastern Conference while riding a four-game losing streak.

“It’s very, very unlucky, bad luck, or whatever you want to call it piling up together,” Nurse said of having his Big Three all miss time because of injuries. “But, I mean, we got to go play.”

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Batum was a key addition last season, and the Sixers were determined to re-sign him this offseason.

But the power forward opted instead to head back to the Clippers, from whom the Sixers acquired him in the November 2023 James Harden blockbuster trade.

“Basketball-wise, it was great for me last year,” he said of his time with the Sixers. “When I got there, I didn’t know what to expect. Basketball, it was a great year, but at the end of the year, at this stage of my career, I need to make the best decision for me. Family-wise, like contract and everything, and which team was — I need to check off the boxes.”

The native of France often mentioned how his children attended a Southern California school where French is frequently spoken. It also was an area his family has called home since he originally signed with the Clippers on Dec. 1, 2020.

“I want to go back close to my family,” Batum said. “I don’t want my kids to change schools and stuff like that. And I go back to an organization I know very well with a coach [Ty Lue] I know really well as well. ... So I know my role. I know everything. So just to come back here checked all the boxes for me.”