What Does Nick Nurse See In Tyrese Maxey?

Over the previous two seasons, Tyrese Maxey has proven to be one of the bright stars in the Philadelphia 76ers' system, with former head coach Doc Rivers giving him more than a chance to shine since the fallout with Ben Simmons.

Maxey went from being a fringe player during his rookie campaign to averaging 20 points in just his second season in the starting lineup.

Newly appointed head coach Nick Nurse highlighted the former Kentucky guard's strengths from his time coaching against him, pointing out that Maxey's agility is one of his biggest strengths.

"From afar, playing against him was difficult," said Nurse, "Just the sheer speed and quickness that he has, it was tough to game plan against him. Sometimes you can't beat the speed, you can't come up with to beat the speed."

Even when Toronto Raptors would create a solution for Maxey, he would always find a way of breaking through, Nurse stated.

"But what he did, what our experience was, it wasn't just speed and layups then it was he started to shoot the ball really well, and then he started to make little further layups, we were trying our best to get him away from the rim, but he'd still make a lot of those," Nurse continued.

While the 55-year-old praised Maxey, he also sees multiple areas for improvement in Maxey's offensive game, highlighting his game off the pick and roll.

"He's got a tremendous chance to improve and take a step forward," stated Nurse. "I would start offensively, getting him more reps in the pick and roll so he can make the reads to all of the other players on the floor depending on what he sees."

While Maxey has always been known for his rim-running tendencies and most recently, his shooting, one of his weak spots has always been his lack of defensive capabilities, but Nurse doesn't really see it that way.

"That's one thing... we didn't think he wasn't a good defender," Nurse finished. "We thought with that quickness and speed that he could get up the floor and disrupt the rhythm and all of those kinds of things."

Declan Harris contributes to All76ers, a Sports Illustrated channel. You can follow him on Twitter: @DecIanH.

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