in else clause the return value of my list is None, outside of the else clause it's returned correctly, would like to know why [duplicate]

list1 = [2,5,4,6,3,8,9,7,1]
list2 = [-4,5,-3,8,-7,2,5,1,3,6]

def maxFunction(attrList,attrList2):
    value1 = attrList[0]
    for item in attrList:
        if item  <= value1:
            value1 = item
    attrList2.append(value1)
    attrList.remove(value1)
    if len(attrList)> 0:
        maxFunction(attrList,attrList2)
    return attrList2                   #I tried to  else:
                                       #               return attrList2
    
print(maxFunction(list2, []))

above code works fine. But I have a question about this function. If I put the return statement behind an else statement(would be logical as I used an if statement), it does print the list but it no longer returns it. Can someone explain why as I'm quite new to programming. Thanks in advance