Tyrese Maxey hates losing. But he vows to ‘keep being myself and keep smiling’ in a nightmare season.

Tyrese Maxey slung the hood of his gray 76ers sweatshirt up onto his head, and spun his rolling chair around to face the swarm of reporters gathered at his locker.

The 24-year-old star guard was tasked, once again, with trying to explain his team’s latest debacle, Monday against the Chicago Bulls, when the Sixers trailed by as many as 50 points against the opponent they are supposedly chasing for the Eastern Conference’s final play-in spot.

“It’s my job to make sure that we compete extremely hard,” Maxey said, his chin resting on his left hand, “and I’ll do a better job of that.”

» READ MORE: The Sixers don’t think it’s time to tank. But Paul George says ‘we’ve shown no signs of a team that will compete.’

Maxey fulfilled his unofficially designated role of spokesperson for this dreadful Sixers season, which next heads to Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night for the first time since last spring’s first-round playoff series against the New York Knicks. Maxey’s last appearance at the World’s Most Famous Arena was that masterful 46-point Game 5 performance, when he launched a shot from the logo to cap a stunning scoring flurry to force overtime, hollered while strutting toward the Sixers’ bench, and further announced himself to the basketball universe.

He returns to that historic venue still as a dynamic, All-Star-caliber player who entered Tuesday ranked fifth in the NBA in scoring (27.1 points per game) and as a noticeably improved defender. Yet the Sixers remain in a jarringly opposite state as a team, on the stretch run of a 2024-25 season that began with championship aspirations but rapidly spiraled into a horrendous 20-37 record with 25 games remaining.

Injuries to perennial All-Stars Joel Embiid and Paul George — and the dizzying lack of lineup cohesion as a result — are at the top of the blame list for this season’s woes. And while shouldering the mounting losses for the first time in his basketball life, Maxey has been thrust into becoming the Sixers’ primary leader.

Maxey acknowledges it all caused mental strain earlier this season. Now, he is vowing to maintain the spirit that instantly made him such an entertaining player to watch — and an impactful presence in the locker room.

“I had my moments early on. I won’t have them again,” Maxey said in the visitors’ locker room in Denver last month. “Because those mess up our team and our organization. That’s what my job is here — not just to be the best possible player that I can possibly be, but to be the best person for everybody in this locker room, the entire organization. Uplift everybody. That’s what I do. I’ve always done that, so I can’t change it now, just because stuff isn’t going our way.

“When I’m in the crib by myself, in the hotel room, I can be whatever. But as soon as I get around my teammates, as soon as I get around the organization, I want to be uplifting. And I’m going to go out there and try to win every single night and do whatever I can, whatever it takes.”

Maxey also follows such declarations about positivity by reiterating this: He still hates losing.

So much so that, during Maxey’s lone college season at Kentucky, then-coach John Calipari needed to teach him how to “debrief” for the night following a defeat, before coming back with a fresh mindset in the morning. When Maxey arrived in the NBA, where games stack up much quicker during an 82-game slate, a Sixers staffer preached the “Be a goldfish” short-memory mantra popularized by the television series Ted Lasso.

“I don’t think that’s a secret,” Maxey said. “I think y’all have seen me over the years.”

Yet Maxey also was a beneficiary of his early-career circumstances. Because he was selected lower than he should have been (21st overall) during a strange, COVID-impacted 2020 NBA draft, Maxey did not face the initial environment of many other top-tier young players who join struggling franchises attempting to rebuild. Instead, Maxey was on a playoff fixture anchored by Embiid, an MVP-caliber center whom Maxey could perfectly complement. Maxey became a starter during the Ben Simmons saga at the beginning of his second season, in 2021-22, and blossomed into a first-time All-Star and the NBA’s most improved player last season.

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That all reversed this season when, following a ballyhooed offseason headlined by signing George, the Sixers started out a stunning 3-14 and have never recovered. Maxey also was not playing up to his own standard. His shot efficiency dipped, including a three-point percentage that sat at 29.6% on 9.4 attempts during his first 16 games.

Personal trainer Drew Hanlen noticed Maxey’s feet were not as wide as normal while shooting, and Maxey acknowledged he was rushing because “I didn’t know when I was going to get open looks” while defenses keyed on him with Embiid sidelined with an ongoing knee problem and suspension. Maxey recalls a week in early December when the Sixers faced the Charlotte Hornets, whom he said face-guarded him “as soon as the ball went up,” and then consecutive home games against the Orlando Magic, who “trapped me every play.” He shot a combined 12-of-36 during those three outings.

His close circle of his parents, Denyse and Tyrone; uncle Brandon; best friend, Chris Harris; and girlfriend, Myra Gordon, quickly recognized Tyrese was in a mental funk.

“They kept saying, ‘Dude, you’re not smiling as much,’” Maxey said in late December. “I didn’t feel it, because I was just so focused on the game. But once I go back and actually kind of think about it, they were right. I don’t know if it was stress or whatever it is. …

“I believe in energy. I believe in people making positive things happen if you think positive.”

That translated into a December surge for the Sixers, who won nine of their 12 games. Maxey was named Eastern Conference player of the week to close the month, including a fabulous 33-point, 12-assist performance in a marquee win at the defending-champion Boston Celtics on Christmas.

When the Sixers returned home following a six-game holiday road trip, Louis Vuitton handbags personalized with each player’s initials waited inside each locker. A note accompanied them with this message from Maxey: “Cheers to a new year and all the great things ahead. Grateful to be on this journey with you all.”

Since then, the Sixers have slogged through far more losses than wins, including their current eight-game skid to slip further out of postseason contention. Maxey said he has been “pretty much at peace with my game” since late December, and is taking pride in the moments when he better adapts to defensive coverages, makes the simple play, and flashes his on-ball defensive activity.

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“I know it’s very difficult for him to be kind of out there on his own-ish,” coach Nick Nurse said after a Jan. 19 loss at the Milwaukee Bucks, when Maxey scored 37 points in a game played without Embiid, George, and Guerschon Yabusele. “No offense anywhere. But it’s still pretty valuable. There’s point guard execution things he needs to work [on], and it’s hard with pieces changing all the time.

“But that’s OK. When it’s hard, it will make that learning curve a little smaller. And there’s scoring challenges. There’s shot-searching challenges. There’s making-the-right-play challenges that he may not be getting. So stay positive. Take advantage of that. Continue to develop all parts of his game — and all parts of his leadership — and go from there.”

Those on-court moments for Maxey have been complemented by his off-court approach with teammates.

Like after a Dec. 27 victory at the Utah Jazz, when Maxey playfully mimicked Yabusele’s French accent while bantering, then walked across the locker room to pull up a chair to watch Family Guy with veteran Kyle Lowry and then-Sixer KJ Martin. Or when, following a Jan. 29 home victory over the Los Angeles Lakers, rookie Justin Edwards was comfortable enough to tell Maxey that he was nervous guarding LeBron James for the first time. Or last week, when Maxey joined Embiid in heaving shots from the opposite free-throw line for more than 10 minutes.

“If he’s smiling, if he’s talking, if he’s loud, if he’s joking, it carries over to everybody else,” Embiid said in late December. “We need him to keep doing that, because I’m definitely not going to do it.”

Though Embiid is the Sixers’ most decorated and dominant player when healthy, he also simply has not been around this iteration of the team enough to hold such a leadership role this season. And while George boasts the cache of a stellar career, he is still a newcomer in this locker room and possesses a much more reserved personality.

So Maxey’s leadership progress has been critical to Nurse. After coaching Lowry and Fred VanVleet with the Toronto Raptors, Nurse said Maxey had a “long way to go with him using his voice” when the coach first arrived for the 2023-24 season. But then Maxey “grew really fast,” Nurse said, during a season when Embiid missed two months because of knee surgery and James Harden was traded early.

Maxey felt even more responsibility when the Sixers opened training camp in the Bahamas, recognizing that suddenly, only Embiid had been on the team longer than him. Maxey continued to set the tone with his actions by arriving at the facility for early-morning workouts, and put in-depth conversations with Nurse into practice with teammates.

Since then, Maxey has leaned on Lowry inside his own locker room. Outside it, Maxey has developed a friendship since last year’s All-Star Weekend with the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Donovan Mitchell, who first was an instant-impact player in Utah and has experience with trying to counter a variety of defenses as a smaller guard while playing alongside prominent big men.

“I told him I needed help last year, when Joel went down,” Maxey said. “… He’s just been checking on me, like, ‘You’re starting to figure it out. I can see that you see the same things that I see out there.’”

» READ MORE: Kyle Lowry accepting Sixers’ ‘elder statesman’ role during a frustrating season: ‘It’s not about me’

And opposing coaches, including Hall of Fame former point guards Jason Kidd and Chauncey Billups, also have noticed Maxey’s more confident style. Before the Sixers’ Dec. 29 win at the Portland Trail Blazers, an unprompted Billups said that Maxey’s “spirit is always beautiful out there … and it’s the reason why he’s probably everybody’s favorite teammate.” Before the Sixers’ Feb. 4 win over the Dallas Mavericks, Kidd said he picked up on Maxey’s poise while interacting with teammates while watching film.

“I can’t see what he’s saying,” Kidd said. “But he’s communicating. As a point guard, if you’re communicating, you’re doing the right thing as a leader.”

Maxey’s joyful aura does not mean an absence of stressing accountability, however. That was clear during a November team meeting following a loss at the Miami Heat, when Maxey called out Embiid for too-frequent tardiness that Nurse later said demonstrated the guard’s maturity, confidence, and care factor. Or when Maxey sat at his corner locker in Denver and acknowledged the intensity of the postgame scene following a blowout loss to the Nuggets, when outsiders could hear yelling on the other side of a wall. Or when he emphasized how the Sixers needed to approach the stretch run after the All-Star break.

“It’s going to start with Joel, Paul, and myself,” Maxey said last Wednesday. “And not just scoring and not just on the court, but just mentality-wise and holding ourselves accountable and holding guys accountable. …

“It’s not just going to fall into our hands. We’ve got to go out there and actually win games. Nobody’s scared of us. You can see our record.”

After getting drubbed by the Celtics, though, Maxey emphasized that the Sixers must “be more competitive than those guys over there, no matter who we’re playing.” When Embiid declined to speak to reporters after a horrendous loss to the shorthanded Nets — during which the Sixers surrendered 40 first-quarter points, and then lost at the buzzer following Maxey’s wild game-tying three-pointer — Maxey was the representative who again stepped up to the podium, literally and figuratively.

Following Monday’s pregame workout to assure he could play against the Bulls with a sprained right finger, Maxey stopped by the tunnel to sign autographs with his hand still taped up. Hours later, Maxey flipped his hood up, turned his chair, and bluntly called the collective effort “unacceptable.”

» READ MORE: Nick Nurse delivers clear message after Sixers’ latest lackluster effort: ‘We’ve got to be professional’

Up next is Maxey’s return to the Garden, where last spring he further launched himself into the basketball universe. His team’s circumstances are jarringly different today, in the stretch run of a season gone completely awry.

But Maxey still will not waver from the spirit that has defined the excellent start to his NBA career, even as his leadership responsibilities have grown.

“They need somebody that is positive every single day,” Maxey said. “I can’t let anything that is going on around me — or how I feel — I can’t let it show. I think that’s what I have to keep doing a good job of. …

“I do this for a living, and I absolutely love doing it. So just uplift, and keep encouraging guys.”