76ers' Tyrese Maxey transforms into star player needed for championship push

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Doc Rivers was not expecting guests one day this summer when members of his staff turned up uninvited at his house with a direct demand of the Philadelphia 76ers coach: Tyrese Maxey needed an intervention.

It was true.

Maxey needed help getting out of the gym. So a pair of coaches tried to persuade Rivers to talk Maxey into slowing down.

The third-year guard found a court, a pick-up game, anywhere with a basketball in his travels this summer and hooped about every day from dawn through lunch through late nights in a never-ending chase at professional perfection.

Philadelphia 76ers' Tyrese Maxey poses for a photograph during media day at the NBA basketball team's practice facility, Monday, Sept. 26, 2022 in Camden, N.J. (AP Photo/Chris Szagola)

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Yeah, Rivers said, no dice.

"It’s hard to shut a guy down like that, it really is," Rivers said. "They’re young and you kind of let them do it."

Who knew? The one way to get a player like Maxey to actually play less basketball was get him to training camp. Maxey laughed Wednesday as he counted the hours sequestered in the team hotel from the night before, from "like 4:30, 5 o’clock to 11 o’clock" with teammates Joel Embiid, James Harden, P.J. Tucker, Tobias Harris and others playing cards, videogames, basically bonding the way Rivers envisioned when he moved camp from team headquarters in New Jersey to the Citadel. The only way Maxey was getting close to a ball was if one showed up on a gaming console.

Alas, it was mostly Madden and FIFA.

Those games belonged to Embiid.

"They’re way too competitive in those things," Maxey said, laughing. "It was fun,