Tyrese Maxey’s ascension as the next superstar Sixers perimeter player continues to crystalize. On Thursday night in a win over the Miami Heat, the 25-year-old All-Star set the franchise record for made three-point shots, moving ahead of Allen Iverson’s total of 885. Maxey has his whole career in front of him, one that hopefully includes him wearing Sixers red, white and blue for the entirety of it. If all goes as well as Philadelphia hopes, the sharpshooting guard will make this an unbreakable record for the franchise.
The fact that Maxey was able to break this record so quickly into his NBA life is a testament to his skill when launching it up from deep, but also speaks to how weird and inept the Sixers franchise has been when it comes to three-point shooting and how long they were in the basketball Stone Age.
Iverson, who played before the NBA’s analytical and three-point revolution, was never a great shooter from deep. He shot just 30.9 percent from three during his decade-plus stint in Philly. He was just chucking them up while mixing in his crafty driving and ability to live at the free throw line as an undersized superhero.
Previously second in made threes was Robert Covington, initially a Process-era afterthought who carved out an 11-year NBA career. Those Sixers teams, after Sam Hinkie came to power and installed Brett Brown as head coach, finally caught up to the fact that three points are worth more than two. Novel idea! No one was hoisting more shots from beyond the arc during that time than Covington, who did so for some tremendously bad teams in addition to some pretty damn compelling ones.
Before that though? Before Hinkie, after years spent with Daryl Morey in Houston as the Rockets became the league’s most analytically inclined organization, came to Philly? It was as if the team was scared to shoot threes.
I became a full-on NBA nerd, consuming podcasts and all that, during Doug Collins’ tenure. Do you know how hard it was to be a 17-year-old basketball dork who was watching teams like San Antonio flourish, pushing the sport into the next generation, while the laughably irrelevant Sixers preached an offensive philosophy built around long-2s and general junk nonsense? Don’t even get me started on whatever they were doing when Eddie Jordan was running the show with his Princeton offense in 2010 too!
All the credit in the world to Maxey. Again, he should make this total skyrocket with any future Sixer unable to close in on it. I do hope, however, someone like VJ Edgecombe and whatever future role players that the team surrounds the backcourt duo with are up for the task of rewriting this sad record book as it stands currently.
