MIAMI (AP) — When it came to opening nights in the NBA, Orlando and Denver stood alone this season. They had the same starters for Game 1 this year as they had for Game 1 last year.
It's a rarity.
Of the NBA's 30 teams, 28 had at least one new opening-night starter this year when compared to the lineup they trotted out for Game 1 of last season Some had four new starters, a reminder that NBA teams never stop tinkering with rosters.
“I can attest that
no team stays the same,” Minnesota coach Chris Finch said.
Does it matter? Probably not. Coaches laugh at the fascination with who starts a game anyway.
“In all honesty, I think people care about it too much,” Boston coach Joe Mazzulla said of all the attention that a starting lineup seems to generate. “It lasts five minutes and there's still 43 minutes left in the game.”
Orlando started Paolo Banchero, Desmond Bane, Wendell Carter Jr., Jalen Suggs and Franz Wagner for the second straight year. Denver opened its season with Nikola Jokic, Cameron Johnson, Aaron Gordon, Jamal Murray and Christian Braun for the second year in a row.
There were 71 players who made opening game starts this season with the same team as they did last year. There were another 21 players who started for one team last year, then another team this year. The last two NBA champions — Oklahoma City in 2025 and New York this past season — were among the teams that had four starters this year in the lineup for Game 1 last season.
“End of quarter lineups are important. Start of quarter lineups are important. End of game lineups are important,” Mazzulla said. “I think it just gets overblown. I put in just as much thought with an end of quarter lineup as I would with a starting lineup. ... They all carry the same weight to me.”
Stephen Curry started his first game with Golden State, and now in Year 18 of his legendary career he's made 18 opening night starts — obviously, all with the Warriors. He's a rarity: only Curry, Jokic and Phoenix's Devin Booker have started for the same team on opening night in each of the last 10 seasons.
“I still love it," Curry said. "I still enjoy it. I love the work. There’s a lot more work off the court than it used to be, but that’s fine.”
Some teams are used to big annual changes. The Los Angeles Clippers had a different starting lineup this season than they did last year. And the year before that. And the year before that. And, well, just keep going. According to research done by SportRadar, the Clippers haven't had the same Game 1 lineup in consecutive years since the mid-1970s — when the team called Buffalo home.
Toronto has never repeated an opening-night starting lineup and neither has Sacramento, at least not since such things began being tracked in 1974 and the Kings were playing in Kansas City. Most NBA teams have gone more than a decade without a repeated starting five for Game 1s.
Miami coach Erik Spoelstra has filled out 19 opening-night lineup cards in his tenure with the Heat. And all 19 have had a different starting five. He never thought much of it until getting asked about it this week.
“That is weird,” he said.
The Heat have been around for 39 years; they've had the same opening-night lineup twice, and both of those were in 1999 — the shortened 1998-99 season, followed by the 1999-2000 season that started nine months later. Minnesota has been around for 38 years; it has used 37 opening night lineups, with a different one this year as well.
It's just part of NBA business, Finch said.
“We've had seismic trade after seismic trade," Finch said. "It's all about being better and whatever you need to do to try to be better. You don't always get it right, but you've just got to keep pursuing that.”
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