November 23, 2025
Colleen Claggett/Flor PhillyVoice
Tyrese Maxey has performed like an All-NBA player through 15 games in his sixth season.
With Sixers officially past the 15-game mark of their 2025-26 regular season, it feels like a decent time to begin digging into lineup data.
Which players are succeeding next to each other, and with Tyrese Maxey putting up historic numbers, which players fit best with the burgeoning superstar guard? How should all of it inform Sixers head coach Nick Nurse's processes as he constructs his rotation and substitution patterns?
Perhaps most importantly, what do all of the numbers say about the value of Maxey's offensive dominance?
Diving into the numbers in this week's Sunday stats, all of which are courtesy of Cleaning The Glass:
The Sixers' Net Rating in 432 possessions with Tyrese Maxey, VJ Edgecombe and Quentin Grimes all on the floor.
As far as lineup construction is concerned, the story of the 2025-26 Sixers season so far has unquestionably been their enormous success with three-guard lineups – particularly because, to this point, Jared McCain has been a non-factor or worse. The trio of Maxey, Edgecombe and Grimes has been absolutely electric from opening night on, giving Nurse a foundational look he can build his entire rotation around.
While Edgecombe has surpassed expectations early in his NBA career, of course it is Maxey who powers the success of this combination more than anyone else. He is averaging 33.4 points per game, after all, a number only outpaced by Luka Dončić among all NBA players. But since much of this data is going to speak to Maxey's brilliance and Edgecombe's emergence has received plenty of fanfare, too, it is worth focusing on Grimes here.
Even if Grimes has been the third-best player of these three guards – a very compelling case can be made that he has been a more impactful player than Edgecombe given the rookie's slump, though – he is the one truly vital to making this entire arrangement compatible for all parties. The 6-foot-5 Grimes is the one who must slide up to the wing and guard well above his size. Grimes has some limitations defending NBA wings, but Nurse has routinely trusted him to defend high-profile ones in crunch time, from Jaylen Brown on multiple occasions to Khris Middleton and Brandon Ingram.
Outside of Maxey, Grimes has been the Sixers' best late-game player this season, providing constant two-way jolts in fourth quarters.
"I'm just trying to win," Grimes said on Wednesday. "I want my team to win. I feel like when I'm aggressive, when the team's aggressive, when everyone's in attack mode, it kind of puts the defense on their heels. So I feel like when I'm attacking, getting downhill, making plays for myself and others, we're in a pretty good position."
An example of Grimes' wing defense amid a strong closing effort:
It's almost impossible to have a stronger two-way close to a game than Quentin Grimes did in the Sixers' win over Washington on Wednesday night. Grimes made five shots in the last nine minutes of regulation & was a constant pest on the defensive end of the floor down the stretch: pic.twitter.com/qn3fQGW8id
— Adam Aaronson's clips (@SixersAdamClips) October 29, 2025
With Kelly Oubre Jr. set to miss at least two weeks with an LCL sprain in his left knee, the Sixers are only going to have to lean on Grimes as a small forward more often. Nurse has continually flirted with the idea of starting Grimes alongside Maxey and Edgecombe to begin second halves; whether he does that or not there is no question Grimes will continue to be tasked with guarding up in those three-guard lineups.
"I've got a lot of confidence," Grimes said. "Definitely gives you more confidence when the coaching staff trusts you to go out there and have those tougher matchups and take that on defensively... I like going out there, taking on the defensive challenges, going out there trying to stop other teams' best players, so it's just another challenge for me to go out there and do that and help this team win."
MORE: Film breakdown of Maxey's career-best night and more
The Sixers' Net Rating in 220 possessions with Quentin Grimes and VJ Edgecombe on the floor and Tyrese Maxey off the floor.
There have been multiple occasions in which Grimes and Edgecombe have tag-teamed backup point guard successfully enough to withstand a shaky Maxey performance and swing a Sixers loss into a win. But neither player is a traditional point guard, or anything close to it. On the whole, that has been evident during minutes when Maxey has rested.
The team of Edgecombe and Grimes has almost exclusively been responsible for handling the Sixers' backup point guard minutes this year, because Jared McCain was first injured and then not completely mobile. McCain, who has made some progress in recent days but still might be a ways away from being a consistently impactful rotation player again, is clearly the Sixers' strongest solution to their struggles with Maxey out of games. In his shortened rookie season, McCain showed a dynamic blend of on-ball scoring craft and ahead-of-schedule passing chops. It will be extremely valuable for a Sixers team desperate to get Maxey's playing time lower than his league-high 40.7 minutes per game.
When Maxey, Edgecombe and Grimes all share the floor, the immense level of respect Maxey commands from opposing defenses eases the burdens of the other two guards, who become overqualified for the roles they occupy offensively and the shots they find themselves taking. But when Maxey is removed from the equation, the opposite becomes true: Grimes and Edgecombe both have to try to fill shoes that are just a bit too big.
The Sixers' Net Rating in 970 possessions with Tyrese Maxey on the floor and Joel Embiid off the floor.
For longer than Maxey has been in the NBA, the Sixers have been trying to figure out how to survive with Embiid off the floor. Ben Simmons was not enough, neither was Simmons being joined by Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris. Even James Harden could not vanquish the problem. Maxey became a rising star, but he was not up to the task either.
Maxey has now done it. But as soon as it happened, the Sixers became unable to survive when he sits. It is a cruel game of Whac-A-Mole.
Embiid was making significant strides before a right knee issue put him on the shelf for what has now been nearly two weeks, but Embiid's issues with his left knee made him a massive defensive liability. The Sixers hope that Embiid's mobility improves with more playing time and his defense eventually gets closer to its previous, stellar form. But it is going to be hard for the Sixers to consistently win his minutes while he is so limited defensively, not to mention the offensive upside and stability the former NBA MVP provides is not all that reliable because he misses so many games.
It took nearly a decade, but beginning with the Sixers' disastrous 2024-25 campaign they finally have on-off numbers that do not support the case for Embiid as arguably the single most valuable player in the NBA. This table below just as much of an Embiid table as it is a Maxey table:
| Lineup | Net Rating |
| Maxey and Embiid on | +3.5 |
| Maxey on, Embiid off | +5.4 |
| Embiid and Maxey off | -10.3 |
Ultimately, though, Maxey does deserve an enormous amount of credit for getting to the place where he is a walking top-tier offense. It is hard not to be when you have all of the gifts on display here:
All 18 of Tyrese Maxey's made shots in his career-high 54-point performance on Thursday night in the Sixers' win over Milwaukee: pic.twitter.com/UYGYdeaiYs
— Adam Aaronson's clips (@SixersAdamClips) November 21, 2025
MORE: Maxey sure looks like a superstar right now
