Inside Sixers star Tyrese Maxey’s resurgence — and season-altering talks with Joel Embiid

Joel Embiid initially approached Tyrese Maxey on the 76ers’ late-night flight following a Feb. 8 loss to the Boston Celtics. The teammates had a second candid conversation about two weeks later, after the Celtics topped the Sixers and Maxey scored only eight points.

Embiid’s message boiled down to the one word most commonly uttered when describing Maxey’s ideal playing style: aggressive, aggressive, aggressive.

“I told him we’re not going anywhere unless he’s aggressive and he just plays freely,” Embiid publicly relayed a few minutes after that second chat. “So that’s all I want for him.”

Maxey has consistently soared since, averaging 22.2 points on 54.5% shooting in the Sixers’ ensuing 20 games. The shift can at least partially be attributed to Maxey feeling “extremely healthy” following a fractured foot suffered in November that kept him out for about six weeks — or to the end of coach Doc Rivers’ experimentation with Maxey as a sixth man upon his return from injury. He was moved back into the starting lineup in a March 2 loss at the Dallas Mavericks.

Yet Maxey, in his words, also “got out of my own head,” a sense of clarity the Sixers will need as they push toward a critical playoff run.

“I was just in a weird space mentally,” Maxey said recently. " … Once I got out of that, I think I’ve helped us try to win games and came back to being myself. I feel like this was the same type of pace I was on at the beginning of the year, before I got hurt.”

Maxey, who did not play in the Sixers’ final three regular-season games because of neck stiffness, is already putting a bow on another season of career highs in scoring (20.3 points per game), three-point accuracy (43.4%), and effective field-goal percentage (56.8%).

From Feb. 27 through March 7, though, the dynamic guard scored at least 20 points in six consecutive games for the first time in his three-year career. He then surpassed that mark two weeks later with seven consecutive 20-point performances, including 37 in a March 25 loss at Phoenix, which marked the fourth-highest total of his career. He played significant chunks of the stretch as the primary ballhandler while NBA assist leader James Harden nursed a sore Achilles tendon.

That it took pulling out of a mental funk to begin this upswing may seem surprising, given Maxey’s demeanor is a rare blend of cheerful and competitive. He also knows the Sixers have “the ultimate confidence” in him, but “we’re all humans at the end of the day.”

Maxey compared that temporary hesitancy or self-doubt to his arrival at Kentucky, when coach John Calipari told Maxey he would not play in the Wildcats’ marquee opener against then-No. 1 Michigan State at Madison Square Garden. Instead, Maxey came off the bench to score 26 points, including a late three-pointer to help lift his team to victory.

“That was my first time being like, ‘Dang, why am I not going to play? I feel like I did pretty good in preseason,’” Maxey recently recalled. “But [Calipari] used it as motivation for me to go out there and show the world what I could do — and ever since then, I’ve been me.”

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Maxey’s recent mental refocus did not crystalize overnight, however. He sent a text to his parents in early February, recognizing he was not “playing with joy, and that affects our team.” Rivers, Harden, and assistant coach Sam Cassell — all former or current point guards — have been in Maxey’s ear. Even reserve center Paul Reed, a close teammate because they were both part of the Sixers’ 2020 draft class, implored Maxey to get downhill when the big man rolls to the basket, because “either you have a lob, or we have layups.”

“I don’t think he likes when I shoot step-back threes,” Maxey joked. “So I’m trying to cut down on those.”

Added Reed: “I just know it’s so hard to guard him in pick-and-roll actions. Nine times out of 10, he ends up getting a bucket.”

Maxey and Embiid, though, have established a particularly special rapport.

That allows Embiid to bluntly-yet-playfully tell Maxey “You were trash” during an infamous postgame press conference in Toronto last season, or to say “I don’t care” when asked just before the All-Star break about Maxey coming back from injury and adapting to a reserve role. Embiid has also referred to Maxey as the Sixers’ best player, while Maxey constantly says some version of the MVP contender is “really good at basketball.”

When Embiid jokingly directed Maxey to say something nice about him with a media scrum surrounding the guard’s locker in Phoenix last month, Maxey’s tone turned sincere.

“He’s really a better person, though,” Maxey said of Embiid. “A lot of people don’t know that. … Before I came here, I was like, ‘Ehhh.’ But when I got here, I was like, ‘Aw, man. He’s not a bad person. He’s a great person.’ ”

Maxey’s surge during late February has also been fueled by improved health. After his foot hurt “really bad” during some games early in his return, he said this is the best he has felt since the beginning of the season. Extra rest to heal the injury also helped his whole body “replenish,” he said, after he played a full slate of starter’s minutes for the first time in his NBA career last season.

This run hit hyperdrive when Maxey scored 17 fourth-quarter points in Dallas, a performance that (not-so?) coincidentally occurred when he moved back into the starting lineup. Though Rivers initially said that first group would be determined game-by-game, the coach stuck with Maxey. He has twice collected seven assists during this stretch — tied for his second-highest total of the season — primarily by distributing when defenses collapse as he explodes to the basket. Pressuring the ball full court has made Maxey less of a liability on the defensive end. And he is making shots at an insane efficiency, particularly his 52.6% mark on 6.8 three-point attempts per game since Feb. 27.

“Even when I miss, I can’t get timid,” Maxey said. “I can’t get scared. Being out there with Jo and James, Tobias [Harris], those guys cause a lot of attention and they need space. They need people to knock down shots. They need people to shoot shots extremely fast and get them off.”

At 22 years old, Maxey said he still learns something new every time he is on the court.

He wants to improve late in the shot clock, when it’s imperative to have a variety of moves to shake free for a shot or a pass. Rivers believes Maxey could still bring the ball up more frequently and, when he does not have a direct scoring lane, more deliberately pass with the intention of playmaking for a teammate rather than to simply move the ball. Harden hopes Maxey can work to complement his pure speed with crafty change of direction, which can “knock defenders off-balance.”

And following the Sixers’ loss at Golden State on March 24, Rivers pointed out a play on film when the defense swarmed Embiid and “it was like the ocean spread, and [Maxey] picked the ball up and threw it back.”

“What I tell him,” Rivers said, “is, ‘Don’t think. Just go be aggressive. I want me to tell you to stop shooting, not me ever to tell you to shoot.’”

There’s that word again: aggressive. And if that mentality ever fades again, expect Embiid to pull Maxey aside for another candid chat.

“When the best player in the world, probably, believes in you,” Maxey said, “and you believe in yourself, you’re good against the world.”