In the first half of their home opener on Thursday night, the Sixers were being serenaded by boos. And they deserved it, as LeBron James later admitted.
After Tyrese Maxey tied the game at 11 early on, the Cleveland Cavaliers rattled off a 24-7 run to finish off the first quarter. The Sixers fell into a 29-point deficit in the second quarter and headed into the locker room down 69-45 at halftime.
At that point, the Sixers had two choices. They could have gone through the motions in the second half
and decided it just wasn’t their night, particularly if the Cavs started the third quarter off strong. As Joel Embiid said after the game, past Sixers teams “would have just laid down and tried to move on to the next one.”
Instead, the Sixers opened the third quarter on an 11-0 run and got right back into the game. The end result? The biggest comeback win in LeBron’s career, the Sixers’ biggest comeback win in the past 30 years, and what Embiid first called a “top-five night for me since I’ve been in Philadelphia.” (He later amended that to top-three before admitting that he “just kind of made it up.”)
After the game, reporters naturally asked everyone on the team about the mood in the locker room at halftime. To a man, they responded that they viewed the halftime deficit as an early-season litmus test.
- Nick Nurse: “There’s some veteran guys in there, and the voices at halftime were like, ‘It’s still a game. Settle down, and let’s start playing our game.’ They were pissed. They were down and pissed both. Getting over what just happened, realizing, ‘Oh my God, we’ve gotta snap out of it.’ And then getting ready to go to work.”
- VJ Edgecombe: “We know that we’re gonna face a lot of adversity this year. That was one of them. It’s all about how we respond. That was the main thing when we went in the locker room. How are we gonna respond to being down 30 points, 29 points? How are we gonna respond?”
- Tyrese Maxey: “My only message that I had, I said, ‘Well, it’s time to see what we’re made of.’ We gonna be some frontrunners and give in and only be happy when stuff is good? Or when stuff is bad, are we gonna fight and be resilient? We did that.”
- Jaylen Brown: “I think I said it’s a great opportunity for us to respond to adversity. There’s gonna be ups and downs all year long. How we respond is gonna be 80 percent of the battle. It’s a good sign that we came out, being down 30, we could have been pointing fingers. We got after it, so I like that.”
- LeBron James: “It was basically just saying, ‘Let’s see what we’re made of at this point of the season.’ I don’t think we’ve got a locker room full of lay-down guys, there’s a lot of game to be played. We answered the call.”
They did indeed.
After turning the ball over 14 times in the first half—which led to a 22-3 Cleveland advantage in points off turnovers—the Sixers had only two giveaways in the second half. They completely flipped the script on the Cavs by scoring 19 points off turnovers in the second half compared to zero for Cleveland.
That ball security also allowed the Sixers to get their half-court defense set more often. With Maxey ramping up the ball pressure and hounding James Harden, the Cavaliers’ free-flowing offense from the first half was nowhere to be found in the third quarter. The Sixers trimmed 16 points off their 24-point deficit in that quarter alone, getting the Xfinity Mobile Arena crowd back into the game after their dismal first half.
From there, the Sixers started hunting mismatches.
Midway through the fourth quarter, Embiid went on a personal 7-0 run to put the Sixers ahead for good. Brown then took over with a 6-0 run of his own, as it looked like he took it as a personal slight that the Cavaliers dared to have Sam Merrill try to defend him. (Perhaps he took cues from Luka Dončić’s response to Yaxel Lendeborg on Wednesday?)
As Steve Jones of Yahoo Sports noted after the game, the Sixers figured to show that type of problem-solving in the playoffs, when it’s easier to create opponent-specific game plans. Their ability to figure it out on the fly only two games into the regular season is eye-opening.
For the second straight game, one major adjustment was sticking Embiid on a non-shooting wing on defense and having LeBron and Brown able to guard up. Once Dean Wade is back in the fold, he’ll likely get a crack at those types of assignments as well. That defensive versatility is a tool that few other teams can match.
The Sixers still have plenty to figure out, as they all readily admit. They’re still developing chemistry with one another, still figuring out where everyone should be on offense and still learning how to pick and choose their respective spots. But their refusal to lay down and quit against Cleveland spoke volumes about this team.
“It’s great to know that deep down, we’re not gonna have that quit mentality,” LeBron said after the game. “You never want to feel like that. You never want to look around and be like, ‘OK, guys gave up.’ It’s great to know that we’ve got that. But you don’t want to put yourself in too many of those situations.”
Dating back to media day, they all preached about needing to develop championship habits from day one. As the New York Knicks proved during the 2026 NBA Finals, the ability to stay resilient amidst that type of adversity is the very definition of a championship habit. After all, the Knicks would have headed back to San Antonio tied 2-2 had they not overcome a 29-point deficit in Game 4.
The Sixers once again had a dismal night from long range (7-of-28), but the three-point shot is the great equalizer in the modern NBA. We’ve seen time and again throughout the league that almost no lead is safe. Teams have to run hard through the tape or they risk coughing up leads that once seemed insurmountable.
After Game 4 of the Finals last year, Brunson explained the secret behind the Knicks’ never-quit mentality.
“We just keep fighting,” he told reporters. “And now we’re going to continue giving it everything we got. Regardless, even if we don’t win Game 4, I feel like the habits that got us back into the game could have carried over into Game 5.”
On Thursday, the Sixers showed that exact type of resilience against the Cavaliers. Although they’d be far better off not falling into a nearly 30-point hole in the first half, their ability to battle back from that and emerge victorious bodes well for this group moving forward.
Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac and salary-cap information via RealGM.
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