76ers 29-point comeback — the Philadelphia 76ers erased a 29-point first-half deficit to beat the Cleveland Cavaliers 114-106 on Thursday night, the biggest comeback in franchise history in the play-by-play era, the biggest of LeBron James' 24-year career, and a win sealed hours after James answered President Donald Trump's anthem attack with a single sentence.
Sport / Basketball — down 69-40, booed by nobody and written off by everybody, Philadelphia outscored Cleveland 69-37 after halftime; then James dismissed a presidential demand for an apology in eleven words
How a 29-point hole became a record comeback
For a half, this was a humiliation. Cleveland, playing its season opener, ran out to a 35-18 lead after one quarter as Philadelphia shot 38.1 percent and committed eight turnovers, then added six more turnovers in the second quarter while Donovan Mitchell (22 points by halftime) and Evan Mobley pushed the margin to 29 points at 69-40. The 76ers went into the locker room down 69-45, having been outplayed in every phase, in a building that had waited all summer to welcome the most ambitious roster in franchise history.
The turnaround began almost immediately. Philadelphia needed only 78 seconds of the third quarter to cut a 24-point halftime deficit to 13, James finding Embiid for a layup that made it 69-56 and woke the crowd of roughly 20,000. Maxey's layup with 5:42 left in the third brought the 76ers within 10, and although Mario Hezonja's two late bank shots steadied Cleveland enough to carry a 90-82 lead into the fourth, the game's physics had changed: Philadelphia outscored Cleveland 69-37 after halftime, a 32-point swing in 24 minutes.
The finish belonged to the new supporting cast as much as to the headliners. Embiid's running floater with 7:20 left drew Philadelphia within 95-94, and his 15-footer on the next possession gave the 76ers their first lead of the entire night. Jaylen Brown — like James, a newcomer making his home debut — scored the next six points, 10 of his 21 in the fourth quarter, and a Maxey basket capped a 15-0 run and a 104-95 lead. Cleveland clawed back within 106-102, but Mitchell missed two free throws, Maxey and Brown scored on the next two trips, and the collapse was complete. Every Philadelphia starter scored in double figures: Maxey 32 with six assists, Embiid 24 with seven rebounds, Brown 21 with eight rebounds, James 17 with 10 rebounds, five assists and three steals, and second-year guard VJ Edgecombe 11 points, seven rebounds and six assists — despite leaving the floor bloodied in the third quarter after an accidental elbow from James in a rebounding collision.
Why this matters
Start with the arithmetic of improbability. According to figures reported by the AP's Tim Reynolds and cited by USA Today, teams across the NBA had won 466 straight regular-season games in which they led by 29 points. The play-by-play era — the period for which possession-level records are complete, dating to 1996 — had never produced a bigger 76ers comeback or a bigger Cavaliers collapse. Heavy reported that Cleveland had been 155-0 in such situations in franchise history. And for James personally, across 24 seasons and more than 1,500 regular-season games, no win had ever come from this far behind. Records like these are not trivia; they are the league's own measurement of how dead a team is supposed to be at 69-40. Philadelphia's answer is now the standing exception.
It also matters because of what it says, two games in, about the league's most scrutinised experiment. The 76ers' summer — James leaving the Los Angeles Lakers, Brown arriving from Boston in a blockbuster deal — invited an obvious question: whether a roster assembled around three high-usage stars and an MVP centre could actually share a game. Thursday's box score is the strongest early evidence that it can. The comeback was not one man's heroics. It was a guard's shot-making (Maxey), a centre's two go-ahead baskets (Embiid), a wing's fourth-quarter closing run (Brown) and a 41-year-old's connective line — 17, 10, five assists, three steals — from James, who spent the decisive minutes creating for others. Philadelphia has now won its first two games in diametrically opposite ways: a controlled 106-100 win at Madison Square Garden on opening night, and a rescue from 29 down at home. Teams that can win both kinds of game in the same week tend to matter in May.
For Cleveland, the mirror image is uncomfortable. A 29-point lead built on the road, against a contender, in a season opener is the kind of statement that announces a team; losing it rewrites the announcement. The Cavaliers' second-half defence conceded 69 points, their offence produced 37, and their best player missed the two free throws that might have stopped the bleeding at 106-102. One loss in October decides nothing, but franchise-record collapses have a habit of following a team — every future 20-point Cleveland lead this season will now be narrated against this night.
The game before the game: Trump, the anthem, and eleven words
The evening carried a subplot that had nothing to do with basketball tactics. On Tuesday, during the anthem before Philadelphia's opener at Madison Square Garden, James had continued his warm-up movements — a practice golf swing and shooting motion — while "The Star-Spangled Banner" was performed. On Thursday afternoon, President Trump posted the video to his social platform, writing that James "disrespects our Country," calling him "no good, a TOTAL DISGRACE," and saying he "should apologize to all of those Great American Warriors and Heroes who died for the American Flag." Our earlier report on that post, and the apology demand, is linked below.
On Thursday night, according to the Associated Press, James stood for the anthem — performed by Boyz II Men — with his arms behind his back and his head bowed, and was then introduced to a roaring ovation. Head coach Nick Nurse, asked before the game about the presidential post, folded it into a theme he has repeated since training camp: "I think that goes right in with other outside noise we've already had. All I really care about is getting to the practice floor, getting them in the film room, getting them to the game floor. The focus that they've had and the intent and all the stuff like that has been outstanding."
After the game, James was asked to respond to the president. He did not apologise, and he did not escalate. "It must be a slow news day at the office," he said — repeating the line once for emphasis. Supporters of the president will hear dismissiveness in that; James' defenders will hear a veteran refusing, for the second time in a long public feud between the two men, to let a news cycle set his agenda on a night his team made history. What is not in dispute is the sequencing: the demand for an apology arrived in the afternoon, and by midnight the story competing with it was the biggest comeback of James' career, against the franchise that drafted him and with which he won the 2016 championship. James has played Cleveland as an opponent for years; he had never beaten them quite like this.
What the numbers say
The quarter splits tell the story of two different games sharing a box score: 35-18 and 34-27 for Cleveland before halftime; 37-21 and 32-16 for Philadelphia after it. The turnover count flipped the same way — 14 Philadelphia giveaways in the first half fuelled Cleveland's transition game, and the 76ers' cleaner second half starved it. Individually, the symmetry at the top of the scoring chart is striking: Maxey and Mitchell each scored 32, Mitchell with 10 rebounds for the game's other double-double alongside James' and Embiid's near-misses. The difference was distribution. Philadelphia placed all five starters in double figures and got its decisive run from its third and fourth options; Cleveland's support scoring — Mobley 18, James Harden 16 on his return to a city that booed him at introductions, Jarrett Allen 14 — faded as the lead did, and the Cavaliers scored just 16 fourth-quarter points.
What happens next
Philadelphia is 2-0, with a home crowd that has already been given a defining night and a locker room that can point to its first crisis — self-inflicted, in October, in the second quarter — as proof of concept. The harder test of this roster was never whether it could score; it is whether the defensive intensity of Thursday's second half survives an ordinary Tuesday in February. Cleveland, 0-1, returns home to face Brooklyn on Saturday with a simpler question: how a veteran team closes. Kenny Atkinson's group does not need a new identity; it needs the final 20 minutes of Thursday back. As for the anthem story, James' one line was constructed to end it, and the president had not responded by the time of publication. If history is a guide, the basketball — a 29-point comeback that rewrote three record lines at once — is the part of Thursday night that will still be cited in April.
Read next: 76ers spoil Knicks' ring night in LeBron James' debut · Trump demands LeBron James apologise over the anthem
Sources: Reuters / Field Level Media match report, Philadelphia, October 22, 2026 (Maxey 32, Embiid 24, James 17 and 10 rebounds, Brown 21 with 10 in the fourth; 69-37 second half; quarter-by-quarter comeback sequence); USA Today, October 22, 2026 (ESPN and AP figures: largest comeback of James' 24 seasons; biggest 76ers comeback and biggest Cavaliers blown lead of the play-by-play era per AP's Tim Reynolds; 466 straight NBA regular-season wins by teams leading by 29); Associated Press via TheScore and LA Post, October 22, 2026 (Trump's anthem post and quotes; James' anthem posture and roaring ovation; Nick Nurse pre-game quotes; James' post-game "slow news day" response); ClutchPoints, October 23, 2026 (James 17 points, 10 rebounds, five assists, three steals in 33 minutes; Edgecombe collision); Heavy, October 22, 2026 (29 points as the 76ers' biggest comeback of the play-by-play era, the largest comeback of James' career, and Cleveland's largest collapse, ending a run of 155-0 in such situations). Scorecard: Cleveland Cavaliers 106 (Mitchell 32 and 10 rebounds, Mobley 18, Harden 16, Allen 14) lost to Philadelphia 76ers 114 (Maxey 32, Embiid 24, Brown 21, James 17 and 10 rebounds, Edgecombe 11).