By JIMMY GOLEN AP Sports Writer<\/p>\n
Tyrese Maxey scored 40 points and VJ Edgecombe added 34 in his NBA debut to help the Philadelphia 76ers rally to beat the Boston Celtics 117-116 in their season opener Wednesday night.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Edgecombe scored the most points in an NBA debut since Wilt Chamberlain had 43 on Oct. 24, 1959.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Philadelphia led by four with 22 seconds left, but it was down to one when Edgecombe missed a pair of foul shots with 9.1 seconds to play. Payton Pritchard had two shots for the winner and missed both.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Joel Embiid played for the first time since February, scoring four points on 1-of-9 shooting. The 2023 NBA MVP and a two-time league scoring champion had six rebounds in 20 minutes as he returns after a 2024-25 season when he was limited to 19 games because of a sprained left foot, a sinus fracture and arthroscopic surgery on his left knee.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jaylen Brown returned from a hamstring injury in the preseason finale to score 25 points. The 2024 NBA Finals MVP is expected to carry a heavier load this year with fellow All-Star Jayson Tatum, who watched the game from the bench in street clothes, recovering from a ruptured Achilles tendon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Derrick White scored 13 points of his 25 points in the third quarter, when the Celtics scored 16 straight points to turn a five-point deficit into an 11-point lead. The Celtics led 94-84 with nine minutes remaining before the Sixers scored eight straight points to make it close.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Up next\u00a0<\/p>\n
76ers: Host Charlotte on Saturday.
Celtics: At New York on Friday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By JIMMY GOLEN AP Sports Writer Tyrese Maxey scored 40 points and VJ Edgecombe added 34 in his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[2242,355,99],"class_list":["post-245019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-boston-celtics","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}