{"id":466245,"date":"2026-02-13T12:36:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T12:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/466245\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T12:36:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T12:36:16","slug":"nikola-topic-makes-nba-debut-after-cancer-diagnosis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/466245\/","title":{"rendered":"Nikola Topic makes NBA debut after cancer diagnosis"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nikola Topi\u0107 makes his NBA debut after battling cancer.<\/p>\n<p>OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) \u2014 Nikola Topi\u0107 made his NBA debut <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nba.com\/game\/mil-vs-okc-0022500789\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Thursday night<\/a> for the Oklahoma City Thunder and scored his first points after undergoing treatment for testicular cancer.<\/p>\n<p>The Serbian guard was the 12th pick in the <a href=\"http:\/\/nba.com\/draft\/2024\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2024 NBA Draft<\/a>. He missed all of last season with a knee injury he suffered before the draft and all of this season after receiving a cancer diagnosis during the preseason. He had a procedure in October, then underwent chemotherapy and worked his way back into shape.<\/p>\n<p>He entered Thursday\u2019s game against the Milwaukee Bucks late in the first quarter and received a loud ovation. He scored his only points on a jumper from near the free-throw line early in the second quarter. He finished with two points, one rebound and one assist in a 110-93 loss.<\/p>\n<p>Topi\u0107 had seven points and seven assists in 16 minutes for the Thunder\u2019s G League affiliate, the Oklahoma City Blue, in a 137-135 overtime victory over the Sioux Falls Skyforce on Monday night.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nikola Topi\u0107 makes his NBA debut after battling cancer. OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) \u2014 Nikola Topi\u0107 made his NBA&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466246,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,216960,99],"class_list":["post-466245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-nikola-topic-debut","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466245","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=466245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}