PHILADELPHIA–In four regular season games against the Boston Celtics, Tyrese Maxey struggled as he averaged just 10.0 points and he shot 35.4% from the floor and 21.4% from deep.
In the first three games of this semifinal series with the Celtics, Maxey is averaging 17.3 points, but he’s shooting just 37% from the floor and 27.3% from deep. He has been hesitating on open jumpers and he hasn’t been attacking the basket with force and aggression as he did in Round 1 against the Brooklyn Nets.
Joel Embiid, who had a message for James Harden after The Beard also struggled, wants Maxey to remain aggressive as this series moves forward.
“I was actually gonna talk to him and he’s just got to, obviously, be aggressive and still pick his spots,” Embiid said of Maxey. “Robert Williams is pretty good defensively blocking shots. So you can’t be reckless driving into him. You can make some, but with how athletic he is, there’s a chance he’s gonna block it or change the shot. So I think he’s just got to stay calm and play at a better pace, instead of just attacking and going fast. I think that’s been really an issue.”
Maxey is one of this team’s top scorers. Right next to Embiid and Harden, he is the one the Sixers count on for a lot of buckets. As this series moves on, they will need him to be better.
“I mean, yeah,” Harden said of getting Maxey more shots. “We would love that.”
Now, Maxey did get a lot of good looks in the Game 3 loss to the Celtics. He just didn’t make them and that is why Embiid is preaching patience with the young guard out of Kentucky.
“There’s no panic,” Embiid added. “You’ve got to settle down and he missed a lot of wide-open shots. I tell him every game, you got to shoot. You gotta find a way to take 12-to-14 3s a game. That’s how good of a shooter I think he is and he knows how good of a shooter he is, too so he just needs to keep being confident and find it.”
With that being said, the Sixers are down 2-1. One could make the case they should be down 0-3 if it wasn’t for a big Harden shot in Game 1. They don’t have a lot of time left to get this right as Game 4 is a critical game for this team.
“We don’t have a lot of time down 2-1,” Embiid finished. “It’s easier to sit here and be like, ‘Oh, yeah, it’s fine’. It’s fine, but we got to figure it out. You can’t go down 3-1. You gotta find a way to win Game 4 and think one game at a time and go from there.”
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