In the 2020 NBA Draft, Tyrese Maxey‘s draft stock fell and he was selected 21st overall. This was unexpected, especially as he believed he was better than several of the higher-ranked prospects in the draft. However, as he discussed with JJ Redick on the Old Man and the Three podcast, this drop may have had a lot to do with his poor three-point shooting. Nevertheless, it was still a huge shock to Maxey, especially since he had one of the best sports agents in the game Rich Paul, An agent who has brokered close to $4,000,000,000 worth of deals. And, while Paul is his “dawg” now, he was just unable to fathom what was happening at the time.
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Fortunately, Maxey is quite happy with his current situation. The 22-year-old is happy to be a part of a winning team and is grateful for the opportunity to play with the Philadelphia 76ers. However, at that time he couldn’t understand what was going on. He never imagined himself falling in the draft. And as he said, it may have led him to doubt his agent.
Tyrese Maxey’s poor three-point shooting saw him fall in the NBA Draft despite having a world-class agent like Rich Paul
Draft night wasn’t exactly a joyous time for Tyrese Maxey. Despite being drafted by a win-now organization like the Philadelphia 76ers, he was upset. After all, thanks to his pride, he was expecting to go much higher in the Draft. He was eventually selected with the 21st overall pick, something that came as a huge disappointment to him.
This was especially true because he had one of the best agents in the business, Rich Paul. As he revealed on the Old Man and the Three podcast, he questioned Paul. He needled him about how he could have possibly fallen so much in the draft, especially behind players he believed were worse than him.
In hindsight, he agrees that it may have had a lot to do with two things. The first was his poor three-point shooting in college, where he scored about 29% from beyond the arc. And, the second is COVID-19, which he believes led to organizations and GMs overthinking their selections.
“Draft night was a sensitive day for me. I’m not gonna lie to you. Rich Paul is my agent, I love Rich Paul, he’s my dawg now. But, Draft night, I’m like, “Listen here! What is going on? I need some explanation! Why am I dropping so low?”. You know, cause you have pride at the end of the day, you have pride, and I’m so much better than such and such…whatever.
But, I mean that (29% three-point shooting) might have had something to do with it. Honestly in my opinion what I thought had to do with is, I feel like during the COVID time, a lot of organizations and GMs had a lot of time on their hands, so I feel like they overthought some situations.”
But, when all was said and done, Maxey was happy with how things panned out. He is on good terms with his agent Rich Paul, whom he fondly refers to as his “dawg”. And, more importantly, he’s on a winning team like the Sixers. The perfect place to make all the 20 teams that passed on him regret their decision.
Maxey is always looking for opportunities to exact his revenge on the teams that didn’t select him
Nowadays, every time he steps onto the court, certain teams need to be wary of Tyrese Maxey’s wrath. Despite heading into his third year in the league, the Sixers guard hasn’t forgotten about the teams that passed on him. In fact, he uses it as fuel every time he steps onto the court against them.
He recalls how the 76ers’ player development team has tried to get him out of this mindset but continues to fail. He is hell-bent on making these few teams pay and will do so by dominating them on the basketball court.
Maxey is one of the top up-and-coming players in the league. It will be interesting to see how his career pans out from here on. Hopefully, he will go on to make those 20 teams regret their decision even further.
