Tyrese Maxey has been heaven-sent for the Philadelphia 76ers this season. He may still have a lot of flaws in his game, but there is very little doubt that he is the main reason why the team even touts a winning record as of writing despite having been bitten hard by the proverbial injury bug. The six-year guard has emerged as one of the premier players in the league in the present campaign, but there is one asterisk everyone has to watch out for with him.
Not a lot of people have talked about the workload the 76ers have imposed on their superstar, but it certainly warrants a think piece. Maxey is leading the league in minutes per game with 39.2 minutes a night, which is nearly two full minutes more than the second player on the list. To highlight just how much mileage he has had thus far, he is averaging the most minutes the league has ever seen in 15 years — yes, you read that right.
No one in the NBA has logged more minutes than Maxey has on the average this season since Luol Deng did back in the lockout-shortened 2011-12 season. That is most certainly a piece of history the 76ers are stumbling upon, but that is something which no other team should want to have at this point in time.
The 76ers have made unwanted history by asking too much from Tyrese Maxey
As good as Maxey is, no player in the modern era should even come close to the minutes he has been getting on a nightly basis. Nick Nurse and the entire coaching staff are basically asking for too much from their All-Star, and at some point, there has to be an end point to this undesirable status quo.
Maxey has never really been an injury-prone player, but since last season, he has missed stretches of games from time to time due to various nagging injuries. That is probably a sign that his mileage is catching up to him to some degree, and the 76ers brain trust should lean into those signals more.
Given the speed of the game now where players navigate the floor much faster and with a wider amplitude, it is unsustainable to keep playing Maxey for nearly the entire game. The 76ers, for one, do not have the necessary depth in the backcourt to afford losing him to injury. And almost counterintuitively, it is bad lineup optimization to keep the minutes at the guard positions so locked up to Maxey and VJ Edgecombe.
Sooner or later, the 76ers will reel from the effects of having to play Tyrese Maxey so many minutes. They can only hope that when the games start to matter more, the All-Star guard will still be in one piece. Otherwise, the immediate recipient of the blame should be easy to pinpoint.