victory<\/a> over the San Antonio Spurs in last season’s NBA Finals but were unable to open their season with a win as the 76ers held out after taking the lead in the third quarter.<\/p>\nJalen Brunson led the scoring for the Knicks with 21 points and Karl-Anthony Towns picked up 19 points with 12 rebounds.<\/p>\n
“I could be a lot better,” James told broadcaster NBC. “Still getting my rhythm, obviously just a little bit over two weeks with the new squad.<\/p>\n
“But I like the way we played. I think we played exceptionally well, especially defensively.”<\/p>\n
In the opening match of the NBA’s 81st season, the Detroit Pistons fought back in the second half to win 121-113 against the Boston Celtics.<\/p>\n
Cade Cunningham and Jalen Duren added 22 points each and Duncan Robinson scored 15 of his 21 in the fourth quarter as the home side secured their victory with a 23-0 scoring run.<\/p>\n
Celtics debutant Paul George scored 38 points for his new side in a match between last season’s top two regular-season teams.<\/p>\n
In the night’s final encounter, back-to-back NBA most valuable player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 32 points for the Oklahoma City Thunder as they completed a 116-104 win over the San Antonio Spurs.<\/p>\n
Stephon Castle top-scored for the Spurs with 24 points but his side were unable to match the form that saw them put out defending champions Thunder in last season’s Western Conference finals.<\/p>\n
Victor Wembanyama made just one basket in 13 attempts for the Spurs but contributed 13 rebounds and six blocked shots and scored 12 points largely thanks to 10 free throws.<\/p>\n
“Obviously, this is the team that eliminated us from achieving our goal,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. <\/p>\n
“But for us, I think it was more like we’re just happy to be back. It’s a longer summer when you don’t win and we felt that this summer.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LeBron James scored 14 points on his debut for the Philadelphia 76ers as they defeated champions the New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70],"class_list":["post-311200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}