Tyrese Maxey lays out offseason goals, says he wasn’t good enough
PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia 76ers are beginning to pick up the pieces following their season-ending Game 6 loss to the Miami Heat where all eyes were on James Harden after the star guard took only two shots in the second half.
Other than Harden’s shortcomings, the Sixers weren’t able to really get into a rhythm on offense all night. Joel Embiid shot 7-for-24 for the game and Tyrese Maxey was 9-for-22 as both players scored 20 points.
Maxey’s numbers on paper looked solid in the series with the Heat. He averaged 20.2 points and shot 45.6% from the floor and 34.4% from deep in Round 2, but he feels like he wasn’t good enough and that is going to fuel him all summer.
“Somebody used a phrase earlier in the year when I was having a conversation and he used the acronym of N.G.E which is not good enough and I just wasn’t good enough,” said Maxey. “I’ll take that on the chin and use that as motivation the entire summer.”
Most are willing to cut Maxey some slack considering he is only 21 and just finished up his second season in the league, but he wasn’t hearing all of that.
“I just gotta be better,” he said. “That phrase is gonna stick with me this entire summer and onto next year of not good enough. Just wasn’t good enough.”
Maxey’s second season was a wild one. He was thrown into the position of being the team’s point guard amid the Ben Simmons saga and he then was moved to shooting guard after the team acquired Harden and he was switching up his style all season.
“Some things that just in my head that stick out right now is being able to try to facilitate for others a little bit more,” he explained. “I think I got a little bit better at that. Especially, at the beginning of the year when I had the ball in my hands a lot more. Of course, off the dribble shooting. I worked a lot on catch and shoot because I knew I was gonna be playing with Joel, Tobias (Harris), didn’t know if Ben was gonna play or not, but I was preparing to play with him as well and then James coming in, he created a lot of catch and shoot opportunities for me.”
As he heads into a summer of offseason workouts, the young guard out of Kentucky is ready to take the necessary steps to improve as a player.
“I think creating my own offense, I think I’ll work on that a lot,” he said. “My handle, a little bit of everything. The N.G.E, it goes for everything. It goes for the mental toughness that Tobias talked about, it goes for myself preparing for games, watching film, and going out there and performing on the court.”
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