{"id":552195,"date":"2026-01-22T01:44:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T01:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/552195\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T01:44:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T01:44:10","slug":"tyrese-maxey-reveals-motivation-to-lead-sixers-towards-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/552195\/","title":{"rendered":"Tyrese Maxey reveals motivation to lead Sixers towards success"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jan. 21, 2026, 7:17 p.m. ET<\/p>\n

PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia 76ers<\/a> have continued to follow the lead of Tyrese Maxey who has taken his game to another level in the 2025-26 season. The 6-year guard is averaging 30.0 points, 6.7 assists, and 4.4 rebounds while shooting 46.9% from the floor and 39.7% from deep.<\/p>\n

He has played in 40 out of a possible 42 games thus far and is averaging a league-leading 39.5 minutes per game. He has carried a heavy load for the Sixers in order to throw this team on his back and help them succeed, but it’s a challenge he craves as he continues to be the best he possibly can be for Philadelphia. That is his motivation.<\/p>\n

“I think I\u2019m most definitely nowhere close to where I can be as far as basketball-wise,” Maxey said after being selected as an All-Star starter for the first time in his career. “I feel like I can keep getting better. My thing is I just wanna be better for my teammates, for this organization, my family, and I know I have a coach and an organization that believes in me and teammates that believe in me. When you have that, it pushes you to be even better than what you are.”<\/p>\n

Maxey has taken a lot of steps to become a solid defender in the NBA as he continues to show off the work he puts in on a regular basis. The now 2-time All-Star guard has been able to shake off the “bad defender” label and his coach is noticing it.<\/p>\n

“I think defense starts with wanting to do it, having the desire to do it,” said coach Nick Nurse. “There\u2019s a physical element to it, too. Physicality. He\u2019s gotten stronger, but mostly, I just think he\u2019s realizing what he can do. And I think the combination, like I said the other day, of those other guys kinda stepping up a little bit, and they kinda get feeding off each other a little bit, too. I think that\u2019s part of it, too.”<\/p>\n

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Nurse, who has seen Maxey grow over his 2-plus seasons as coach of the Sixers, has been impressed with the way his star guard has just continued to get better. That isn’t easy in today’s NBA and the No. 21 pick of the 2020 draft has taken on many challenges during his time in Philadelphia. He has taken it in stride and is now considered one of the best players in the league.<\/p>\n

“I think a lot of it\u2019s opportunity,” Nurse said of where he’s seen Maxey grow. “A lot of it\u2019s aggressiveness. A lot of it\u2019s confidence. A lot of it\u2019s the work he\u2019s put in, right? All those kinda rolled into one. I think he\u2019s matured, getting older, playing, trying to give him every opportunity to be aggressive and go do his thing and he\u2019s very talented and I keep saying it. There\u2019s still a lot of room for growth which, I think, is exciting.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jan. 21, 2026, 7:17 p.m. ET PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia 76ers have continued to follow the lead of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":552196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3769],"tags":[679,72400,7,6,678,207,3817,72473,72474,72404,72444,72422,72897,72405,72475,72406,72477,72403],"class_list":{"0":"post-552195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-76ers","8":"tag-76ers","9":"tag-accessfree","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-philadelphia-76ers","14":"tag-philadelphia76ers","15":"tag-sstssportsnbasixers","16":"tag-sstsnsixers","17":"tag-tagbasketball","18":"tag-tagnational-sports","19":"tag-tagnba","20":"tag-tagnick-nurse","21":"tag-tagoverall-positive","22":"tag-tagphiladelphia-76ers","23":"tag-tagsports-news","24":"tag-tagtyrese-maxey","25":"tag-typestory"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}