He could not shoot: He worked to improve
He can’t pass. He worked to improve
He can’t play defense. He worked to improve. I think I am most impressed with his progress on defense. He is all over the place and is like a pesky gnat
And he’s averaging a career high in rebounds right now too, by a lot.
As much as I don’t like harden for how things went down and hate his play style, he had a big influence on maxey’s improvement in terms of passing and shooting.
His step back 3 came out of nowhere and it’s definitely from learning from harden.
Honestly if you put Hardens knowledge of the game and skill into the mind and body of Tyrese Maxey we’re talking about an All NBA first team player. We’re not getting that per day, but we’re getting about as close as we can and it’s awesome.
Kind of reminds me when we let chip Kelly go all our players were so athletic because of the fast pace offense they had to run(which had an adverse effect on the defensive end), then they applied that to a legit NFL play style.
Harden developed maxey when doc couldn’t be bothered, got doc fired and gave us an excellent coach, opted in to give us assets even though he didn’t want to, got us multiple firsts and great rotation players and to top it all off got PJ’s over bloated contract off our books…
One of the best shooters in the league, THE fastest player in the league, one of the best finishers in the league, one of the hardest working players in the league, young, great attitude, fun, good team mate…
… needs to be a couple inches taller. He’ll work on that this off season!
I remember watching the draft with my dad when we picked him. I didn’t really know much about him, but said “we got a starting guard from Kentucky at 21? There’s just something different about Kentucky guards”. Crazy how its panned out.
I also remember my dad bein unimpressed by his 3pt shooting cuz it wasn’t great in college. I wasn’t too concerned cuz he hit FT’s well. Fun fact for those who don’t know - lots of studies have been done that show free throw shooting is a better indicator of one’s shooting potential than their raw 3pt numbers (likely because its rooted in fundamentals). Thats why some college 3pt gunners (like Trae Young or Lonzo Ball) end up being mediocre in the league, but other guys (Maxey or Tatum) grow into it really quickly.
I’ve never seen a player improve like him. At this rate, he’ll be prime Jordan in 2 years and Omni-man in 3 years.