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LeBron James will play his 34th career game inside Madison Square Garden on Sunday. | Photo by Nathaniel S. Butler\/NBAE via Getty Images<\/p>\n
The debut of Sunday Night Basketball features a star-studded doubleheader, with four of the NBA\u2019s 10 All-Star starters taking the court.<\/p>\n
In the opener, All-Star guards (and former teammates) Luka Don\u010di\u0107 and Jalen Brunson square off as the Knicks host the Lakers (7 ET<\/a>). In the nightcap, the two most recent Kia NBA MVP<\/a> winners \u2013 OKC\u2019s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Denver\u2019s Nikola Joki\u0107 \u2013 meet in the Mile High City (9 ET<\/a>).\u00a0 Here are three storylines to know entering Sunday night.<\/p>\n Lakers at Knicks | 7 ET, NBC\/Peacock<\/p>\n Man In The (World\u2019s Most Famous) Arena: LeBron James and the Lakers make their annual stop at Madison Square Garden to take on the Knicks. James enters the game with a 23-8 regular-season record and a 1-1 postseason mark at MSG over the first 22 years of his career. In those 33 games, James has averaged 28.2 points, 6.9 rebounds and 7.4 assists, while shooting 49.5% from the field and 38.1% from 3-point range. What does he have in store for his 34th appearance at The Garden?<\/p>\n Brunson vs. Don\u010di\u0107, Round 3: On June 22, 2018, Luka Don\u010di\u0107 and Jalen Brunson stood side-by-side as Dallas\u2019 first- and second-round draft picks were introduced to the media. The 2018 NBA Draft\u2019<\/a>s No. 3 and No. 33 picks, respectively, played four seasons together before Brunson signed with New York<\/a> as a free agent in 2022.<\/p>\n This will be only the third time they\u2019ve faced each other since, with Don\u010di\u0107 winning the first two matchups: Dec. 3, 2022<\/a> with Dallas, and March 6, 2025<\/a> with L.A. Can Don\u010di\u0107 make it three straight against his former teammate? Or is it Brunson\u2019s turn to win a reunion game? The former teammates enter the matchup as top-10 scorers in the league: Don\u010di\u0107 leads the league (33.7 points per game) and Brunson ranks eighth (27.6 points per game).<\/p>\n Knicks Bounce Back: Over a three-week span from Dec. 31-Jan. 19, the Knicks stumbled to a 2-9 record, including seven double-digit losses. As concern began to engulf the Knicks faithful, the team responded to the noise by rattling off five straight wins, beginning with a franchise-best 54-point victory<\/a> on Jan. 21. New York enters Sunday\u2019s game coming off wins by 16, 27 and 30 points, respectively.<\/p>\n The keys to the turnaround? A newfound defensive identity and a balanced offensive attack. Before this five-game win streak, the Knicks had held an opponent under 100 points only three times in 43 games played. During the streak, they have held four of their five opponents below the century mark.<\/p>\n Brunson leads the Knicks in scoring during this win streak at 23.6 points per game, four points below his season-long 27.6 mark, which ranks eighth in the league. OG Anunoby (18.6 points per game on 63.3% shooting and 52.4% from 3-point range) leads five more Knicks in double figures during this run, which has New York back in the No. 2 spot in the East (via tiebreaker over Boston).<\/p>\n Thunder at Nuggets<\/p>\n 9:30 p.m. ET, NBC\/Peacock<\/p>\n Nikola Joki\u0107 and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander meet for the first time since the 2025 Western Conference Semifinals on Sunday. | Photo by Zach Beeker\/NBAE via Getty Images<\/p>\n Playoff Rematch in Primetime: OKC\u2019s road to the 2025 NBA championship<\/a> ran through Denver as the Thunder and Nuggets waged an epic seven-game battle in the Western Conference Semifinals<\/a>. It began with Aaron Gordon\u2019s game-winning 3-pointer<\/a> to stun the No. 1 seed on its home court, and ended with a blowout win<\/a> in Game 7 in the same arena, behind a 35-point performance from MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the Thunder\u2019s top-ranked defense holding the Nuggets to 93 points.<\/p>\n This marks the first meeting since OKC\u2019s decisive Game 7 win ended Denver\u2019s season. It is the first of four matchups between these two West contenders over the final 33 games of the season for both teams.<\/p>\n Joki\u0107-less Month: The Nuggets were third in the West when Nikola Joki\u0107 went down (bone bruise, knee) on Dec. 29 and they remained third in the West when he returned on Friday, Jan. 30. How did the Nuggets go 10-6 without the three-time MVP and avoid falling in the standings?<\/p>\n Jamal Murray took his career year to new heights, averaging 27.8 points per game on 30.5% usage, while appearing in 12 of the 15 games without Joki\u0107. Joki\u0107 was sharp in his return<\/a>, posting 31 points, 12 rebounds and five assists in 25 minutes as the Nuggets defeated the red-hot Clippers on Friday night. How will he \u2014 and the Nuggets \u2014 follow up that performance against the West-leading Thunder?<\/p>\n First 25, Next 25: The defending champs opened the season on fire, becoming only the second team in NBA history to open a season 24-1 or better. However, after going 24-1 in their first 25 games, the Thunder have gone just 14-10 as they get set to close out their second 25-game segment Sunday in Denver.<\/p>\n The biggest difference? Clutch time execution, where OKC\u2019s net rating went from 41.4 in 10 clutch games (9-1) during their first 25 games to minus-3.8 in 10 clutch games (4-6) over their past 24.<\/p>\n Brian Martin has covered the NBA and WNBA for more than 15 years. You can e-mail him\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0follow him on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LeBron James will play his 34th career game inside Madison Square Garden on Sunday. | Photo by Nathaniel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":451289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,233229,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-451288","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-nbc-sunday-night-basketball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/451289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/GettyImages-2213352638-scaled-e1769917629879.jpg\")
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\nPeyton Watson leaped from Denver\u2019s seventh-leading scorer (10.7 points per game in 27.2 minutes) to its second-leading scorer (22.1 points per game, while shooting 44.3% from 3-point range in 36.2 minutes) while Joki\u0107 was out.
\nJonas Valan\u010di\u016bnas averaged 15.3 points and 10.8 rebounds per game in his first four games back from an injury of his own.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/OKC-First-25-Next-25-1080.jpg\")
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