Philadelphia 76ers guard Tyrese Maxey was named the NBA’s Most Improved Player on Tuesday night in a razor-thin race between him and Chicago Bulls guard Coby White. Maxey led the way with 51 first-place votes, but he appeared on only 79 of 100 ballots, compared to 91 for White.

Fourteen players received at least one vote for MIP this year, so there wasn’t a clear-cut answer for the award. Still, some seem to believe that lofty preseason expectations should have pushed Maxey out of contention.

There’s just one problem: To some extent, that’s revisionist history. Few people expected Maxey to reach the level he has this season—and that includes those within the Sixers, as team president Daryl Morey routinely admits.

Maxey averaged 20.3 points per game last season while shooting 48.1% overall and 43.4% from three-point range as the Sixers’ No. 3 banana behind Joel Embiid and James Harden. When Harden demanded a trade this past summer, it became clear that Maxey would have to fill in as Embiid’s primary sidekick until Morey and the front office resolved Harden’s trade request.

Maxey got off to a sizzling start, opening the season with back-to-back 30-point games and averaging 30.3 points on 50.5% shooting, 6.7 rebounds, 6.3 assists over his first three outings. Less than a week after the Sixers began the regular season, they sent Harden to the Los Angeles Clippers for a package including Nicolas Batum and two future first-round picks.

Maxey didn’t slow down from there. He finished the regular season with new career highs in points (25.9), assists (6.2), rebounds (3.7), three-pointers (3.0), steals (1.0), blocks (0.5) and minutes (37.5) per game. Despite being elevated into the full-time point guard role—at least until Kyle Lowry’s arrival after the trade deadline—Maxey averaged a miniscule 1.7 turnovers per game, too. He had the lowest turnover percentage among the regular rotation players with an assist percentage north of 25 this season.

While Maxey’s scoring explosion was easy to foresee, it was far less clear how he’d fare as the full-time ball-handler. Just look at our non-Harden-related Sixers season preview:

“Playmaking hasn’t been one of Maxey’s strengths since he entered the NBA in 2020, although he’s shown promising strides in that regard throughout the preseason. If he’s able to run the offense seamlessly and walk the delicate balance between creating plays for others and calling his own number, the Sixers could decide to keep him in place as their long-term point guard and begin looking for a bigger, three-and-D backcourt complement.

“However, if Maxey struggles as the full-time point guard, the Sixers would have to focus on acquiring a primary playmaker within the next year. That would also raise larger questions about Maxey’s ideal role in the NBA, as he’s too small at 6’2″ and 200 pounds to defend shooting guards. The Sixers would have to find a bigger ball-handler in the mold of LaMelo Ball, Cade Cunningham or Luka Doncic, all three of whom were top-three picks in their respective drafts.”

Maxey passed that test with flying colors. He developed vital two-man chemistry with Embiid and learned how to recreate the pocket-pass-to-a-free-throw-line jumper that Harden and Embiid perfected last year. His advancement as a passer might not stand out statistically—6.2 assists per game is relatively low for a starting point guard, especially one who played as many minutes as Maxey—but that coincided with a season in which Embiid averaged a career-high 5.6 assists per game as well.

Maxey clearly spent the past offseason developing his playmaking chops, and it paid off with a career year. While his late-season partnership with Kyle Lowry highlighted the advantages of playing another distributor alongside him—thus allowing Maxey to work both on and off the ball—his balance of playmaking and scoring cemented him as a first-time All-Star.

Although Maxey’s efficiency declined in more of a primary offensive role, his scoring leap put him in rare company. According to the Sixers, Maxey’s increase of 5.6 points per game from last season “is the largest by any player who also averaged 20-plus in 2022-23. This scoring average jump makes him one of seven players aged 23-or-younger to raise their average by at least 5.0 points since the NBA-ABA merger after averaging at least 20.0 the season prior.”

Anyone who expected Maxey to take that type of a leap both as a scorer and playmaker—he’s also gotten better on defense—should pat themselves on the back and reap the reward of their preseason MIP tickets. Everyone else should remind themselves that Maxey was still a mystery box as a full-time starting point guard at the start of the season.

White took a bigger year-over-year leap in terms of per-game production, as he went from averaging only 9.7 points in 23.4 minutes per game in 2022-23 to a career-high 19.1 points on 36.5 minutes per game this past season. He came off the bench for all but two games of his 74 games last year and started all but one of his 79 games this year.