Philadelphia 76ers Rally Past Cavaliers 114-106
Down 29 in their home opener, the 76ers produced the biggest comeback in franchise play-by-play history to beat Cleveland 114-106. The Philadelphia 76ers have now won two straight.
By The Beat Writer — CelebnMusic247
There is no polite way to describe Philadelphia’s first half, and no reason to try. The Philadelphia 76ers trailed the Cleveland Cavaliers by as many as 29 points, 69-40, and went to halftime down 69-45 on Thursday night at Xfinity Mobile Arena, per USA Today. Then they won the game 114-106, outscoring Cleveland 69-37 after the break — and rewrote a line in their own record book doing it.
Start with how unlikely this was. Philadelphia had lost 46 straight games when trailing by 24 or more at halftime, per NBC Sports Philadelphia, and was 1-65 in that spot in franchise history before Thursday; the lone previous win came on March 25, 1988, at Boston Garden. Per ClutchPoints, the 29-point comeback is the largest in Sixers history in the play-by-play era, snapping a league-wide run of 466 straight regular-season wins by teams leading by 29 or more.
Tyrese Maxey drove it. Maxey finished with 32 points and six assists, per USA Today, scoring seven points in an 11-0 third-quarter run that dragged Philadelphia back within two at 84-82. Joel Embiid added 24 points and seven rebounds, and Jaylen Brown scored 21 points with eight rebounds in his home debut — 10 of them in the fourth quarter, including three straight baskets in the 15-0 run that finally gave Philadelphia its first lead, per USA Today and Heavy. Every Sixers starter reached double figures: LeBron James had 17 points, 10 rebounds, five assists and three steals in his Philadelphia home debut, and VJ Edgecombe added 11 points, seven rebounds and six assists.
Cleveland’s collapse is the other half of the story, and it was historic in the wrong direction. Donovan Mitchell led the Cavaliers with 32 points and 10 rebounds, per USA Today, and Evan Mobley added 18 points and eight rebounds — but a team that led 35-18 after one quarter scored just 16 points in the fourth. James Harden, booed loudly from tipoff in his return to the city where he played from 2021 to 2023, per USA Today, finished with 16 points and five assists as Cleveland fell to 0-1.
The quarter splits tell the whole night in four lines: Cleveland 35-18 and 34-27, then Philadelphia 37-21 and 32-16. That is not a rally built on one hot shooter — it is a defense that finally woke up and a rotation where five starters all found the game at once.
Philadelphia is 2-0 after also winning its opener at New York, and hosts Milwaukee on Saturday, per NBC Sports Philadelphia. Two games in, the East’s most scrutinized new roster has already produced the kind of win a locker room talks about in March.
The 247 Take — Comebacks this large usually say more about the team that blew the lead, but not this one: Philadelphia’s second half was starter-by-starter accountability, with Maxey as the engine and Brown closing. If the Sixers defend like that for full games, the 29-point hole will be a footnote — the 2-0 start will not.
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Sources: USA Today | USA Today | Sixers Wire
