PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia 76ers picked up a much-needed 103-101 win over the Boston Celtics on Tuesday night, but there were issues that should concern the Sixers.
One was it took a superhuman game from Joel Embiid to beat a Celtics team down two starters. A second was Tyrese Maxey continuing to struggle against Boston.
Maxey shot 2-for-8 on Tuesday. In the four games against Boston this season, he averaged 10 points while shooting 35.4% from the floor and 21.4% from deep. Those numbers are well below his season averages of 20.3 points on 48.1% shooting and 43.4% shooting from deep.
“I want to watch it before I comment,” said coach Doc Rivers. “At halftime I made a comment to our guys, like we got to get him going. We got to get him more involved. We got to get him up the floor. It just didn’t happen tonight and so we got to find out — I want to watch and find out why that happened.”
Maxey relies so much on his speed and the pace being pushed, allowing him to beat guys down the floor to create open looks. The Celtics have done a great job taking away those open looks.
“He did have some shots that he didn’t make, but, I thought his shots were so separated,” Rivers said. “Like one here, one four minutes later, it’s hard to make shots like that. So we got to do a better job of making sure he touches the ball more.”
The Sixers need to get him the ball more for Philadelphia to go deep into the playoffs, but Maxey has to be able to adjust when confronted by a team like the Celtics.
“Obviously, your speed is what gets you to where you need to go, but your pace, change of direction is what is going to help you,” James Harden added of Maxey. “It’s gonna knock defenders off their balance and just thinking the game. It’s not good enough to go out there and play hard or run fast or jump high, like you got to think the game and it’s possession by possession.”
Once Maxey understands the mental side of the game, he is going to be a really tough player to defend.
“Once, you get that, both of those, your skill set with your thought process throughout the course of the game and they match,” Harden added. “You got something special.”
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