Press "Enter" to skip to content

Sixers Notebook: Doc Rivers sees using Tyrese Maxey off bench as win-win

PHILADELPHIA — Since he has been removed from the Sixers’ starting lineup, Tyrese Maxey has had some great games and some ordinary ones, some high-percentage shooting nights and nights like Saturday when he was 4-for-10 in a loss against the Boston Celtics.

Some day, Doc Rivers may look at that boxscore inconsistency and draw some conclusions. Until then, he will look only at one statistic.

“It’s interesting,” Rivers said Monday, before a 101-99 loss to the Miami Heat. “You’re looking at one guy. We’re looking at our team’s success. We are playing really well. So we’re not focusing on one guy. We’re focusing on how the team is playing and winning.”

The Sixers have won 19 of 25, and that was good enough for Rivers to recommit to what has become his standard starting unit of Joel Embiid, James Harden, Tobias Harris, P.J. Tucker and De’Anthony Melton. If the result is some inconsistency from Maxey, he will not panic.

Maxey scored 23 points Monday, including 14 in the third quarter, but fouled out with 3:21 left.

“I was just trying to be aggressive,” he said. “Joel has been on me big-time about passing the ball and being passive. He says, ‘Dude, when you come in you’ve got to flip the switch. We need you to be you to win.’”

Maxey was just 1-for-4 shooting in the first half but finished at 8-for-16.

“Clearly, we want him to be more consistent,” Rivers said. “There’s some things we wanted to do in that Boston game that we clearly thought we should have done. Some of that is on the team. Some of that is on him, and that’s on him. But he’ll get better at it.”

At some point, that all might nudge Rivers into re-thinking his rotations. But it’s not going to happen anytime soon.

“No,” he said. “I think we’ll figure it out.”

• • •

The Sixers are about to play 12 of their next 16 on the road, including some rough assignments in Miami, Dallas, Milwaukee, Indiana and Cleveland.

Pros? Cons?

“I don’t know if there (are) any pros,” Rivers said, laughing. “You’ve just got to go through it. Everybody in the league at some point has a difficult stretch. If you had your druthers, you’d rather have them at the beginning of the season, obviously, just with fatigue. But we did just have an All-Star break. We can look at it that way. We did get rest.”

The Sixers will have a shot at redemption Wednesday night in Miami.

“These are big games against playoff-caliber teams,” Maxey said. “When you run up against another team that has championship aspirations, it’s going to be a battle.”

• • •

Rivers and his coaches had a couple of days to study the film of a come-from-ahead loss to the Celtics. If there was a point of emphasis, it was on the sharp decline of production when the second unit was involved.

“Every night, we’re not going to be perfect off the bench,” Rivers said. “And we are not going to overreact to one night. In the regular season, we’ll keep a deep rotation. But in the playoffs, it will be less of a rotation.”

An early hint at a candidate for a springtime minutes reduction: Shake Milton, who played two minutes against Boston. Monday, he scored three points in 10:19.

• • •

Maxey appeared to twist an ankle late in the game, and Tobias Harris experienced some pain in his calf requiring a locker-room visit.

Both returned.

“I’m all right,” Maxey said. “It’s good.”

Rivers had some slight concern about Harris, who scored just two points in 34:30.

“Calf injuries are bad, but he came back in and said he was fine,” he said. “We’ll see tomorrow, because that’s when you usually find out.”


Source: Berkshire mont

Be First to Comment

    Leave a Reply