Tyrese Maxey Owns the Night Built for LeBron James

Tyrese Maxey scored 32 points as the Philadelphia 76ers erased a 29-point deficit and beat the Cleveland Cavaliers 114-106 on Oct. 22. The night was sold as LeBron James’ first home game in a Sixers jersey, with Jaylen Brown’s debut stacked on the same bill at Xfinity Mobile Arena.

By the fourth quarter the building was chanting MVP for Maxey. James, 41 and in his 24th season, sat the entire 15-0 run that finished the largest comeback win of his career.

The Building Booed Them Off at Halftime

Cleveland came in as the Eastern Conference finalist and played like it for 24 minutes. The Cavaliers led 35-18 after one and 69-45 at the break, after a lead that reached 29 in the second quarter. Donovan Mitchell had 22 of his 32 points before halftime on 11-of-19 shooting, with 10 rebounds in 35:11. Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley fed the paint while Philadelphia’s new starting five hunted for spacing it did not have yet.

The packed house turned. Boos rolled down late in the second quarter, and James later said the team earned them.

THE FIRST-HALF DAMAGE

• The start: Philadelphia scored 18 in the first quarter and closed that period on the wrong end of a 24-7 Cleveland run.
• The ball: The Sixers had 11 turnovers in the first 13 minutes and trailed 17-0 in points off turnovers, then 22-6 after a Maxey giveaway became a Mitchell three and a 67-39 lead.
• The shots: They went 4 of 15 from three before halftime and finished the night 7 of 28, with 14 of their 17 turnovers already on the sheet at the break.
• The guest: James had five turnovers by himself in a 5-of-14 night, 17 points, 10 rebounds, five assists, three steals, in 33:22.

Nick Nurse called it two halves that did not resemble each other. Cleveland coach Kenny Atkinson had a team that had not played in the first two days of the season and looked eager, then lost the physical fight after the break. “They upped their pressure and physicality. It was pretty clear,” Atkinson said. “We did not handle it well.”

Maxey Took Harden and the Crowd With Him

Maxey had been the one Sixer who could still get downhill in the first half, and he carried that into a 12-of-23 night, 10 of 16 inside the arc, 2 of 7 from three, 6 of 8 at the line, six assists, two steals, two turnovers, 41:39. He is 25, 6-foot-2, out of Kentucky, the 21st pick in 2020, now averaging 30.0 points through two games after 28 in 39:34 in a 106-100 opener at New York on Oct. 20.

The swing was the other end. Nurse put him on James Harden full court after halftime, the same Harden who arrived in Philadelphia in 2022 and used to push Maxey to attack. Harden finished 16 points on 5-of-12 shooting, five assists, six turnovers, and a minus-17 in 32:55. He scored zero in the third quarter and committed four of those six turnovers after the break.

Totally changed the game, right? He totally changed the game. I think he came out and just, and it’s kind of, he’s out there doing that and the rest of the guys are in the back watching, and all of a sudden they start saying, you know, I’m in. I’m in. I’ll be in on this, too.

Nick Nurse, 76ers head coach, after the Cavaliers game

Nurse has watched the offensive jump for two years and says the defensive jump matches it, especially when the game needs a stop. Brown picked up Mitchell. Embiid switched more. The contagion Nurse described is the part the scoring column does not show: one guard starts the fight, and four stars decide they will not be the ones standing behind it.

With the Sixers up 98-95 and under six minutes left, Harden grabbed Maxey’s jersey and Maxey shoved him back. Officials stepped in. The crowd had already chosen a target. After the horn, Harden called Maxey over for a dap. “I love him and he loves me,” Maxey told reporters. The clip looks like a grudge. The postgame sounds like two guys who still talk.

A 15-0 Run With LeBron on the Bench

Philadelphia won the third 37-21 and still trailed by eight heading into the fourth. Nurse’s group cut 69-45 to one possession with 3:59 left in the third, then had to do it again. Embiid’s 16-foot jumper over Allen at 6:54 of the fourth made it 96-95, the first lead, the last of seven straight points Embiid scored himself.

HOW THE RALLY STACKED

1. Oct. 22, first quarter: Cleveland 35, Philadelphia 18, Mitchell already cooking and the new starting five turning it over.
2. Oct. 22, second quarter: The hole hits 29. Halftime arrives 69-45. Boos.
3. Oct. 22, third quarter: An 8-0 start after the break, then 37-21 for the period. Maxey’s catch-and-shoot three from a James pass forces a timeout with the deficit inside 10.
4. Oct. 22, 6:54 left in the fourth: Embiid, 96-95.
5. Oct. 22, the next 4:09: Brown’s step-back, drive, and pull-up, Maxey drawing an offensive foul on Peyton Watson near halfcourt, then a finger-roll that caps 15-0 and makes it 104-95. James never checks in for that run.

Brown had four points at halftime and 21 by the end, 17 after the break and 10 in the fourth, with eight rebounds and four assists in 37:43. Embiid had 24 on 8-of-16, seven rebounds, 34:23. Cleveland scored 16 in the fourth. Mitchell had two of them. The Sixers outscored the Cavaliers 69-37 after halftime, and the starters scored 64 of 69 second-half points.

The league’s own cut of the rally is the cleanest look at how fast 29 became a lead.

James still called it everything he had dreamed of. His daughter Zhuri turned 12 that day and sat courtside. He wished her happy birthday on the jumbotron. “Got the boos, that was amazing. We deserved it. And then we got the cheers and almost blew the roof off this thing tonight in a good way,” he said. The career record is his. The 15-0 was not.

Three Streaks Died in One Night

This was the 76ers’ largest comeback of the play-by-play era, which the league dates to 1997-98, and only the 10th time in that window any NBA team has trailed by 29 or more and won. It is not the NBA record. It is the largest comeback win of James’ career, against the franchise that drafted him No. 1 in 2003 and the one he took to a title in 2016, after he spent free agency flirting with a third Cleveland stay and then signed a two-year veteran-minimum deal in Philadelphia.

League tracking since 1996 put three other lines on the same night, and all three snapped together.

WHAT ENDED ON OCT. 22

Cleveland had never blown a lead this large in the play-by-play era, and it did it in a season opener, on the road, in a building that had been on the visitors’ side at the half. The plus-minus sheet is colder than the streaks. On/off tracking had the Sixers plus-19 with Maxey on the floor and minus-11 with him off, a net of plus-30, the same net as VJ Edgecombe. James was plus-7 on the floor and plus-6 net. Anfernee Simons, the second unit’s scoring guard, was minus-24 in 16:42.

Who Runs This 76ers Roster Now?

Maxey does, on the nights the math is this loud. James still organizes, still rebounds, still defends without having to do all of it. Embiid, the 2022-23 MVP, is the interior hammer when his body lets him. Brown is the closer who turns a four-point halftime line into 21. The chants picked the 25-year-old anyway, on a roster that added two headliners this summer and already had a former MVP in the paint.

THE STARTING FIVE ON OCT. 22

Edgecombe, the No. 3 pick in 2025 out of Baylor and Bimini in the Bahamas, matched Maxey’s plus-19 with 11 points, seven rebounds, six assists, and three steals. The official book also gave Philadelphia 64 points in the paint on 32-of-54 against Cleveland’s 60 on 30-of-47, plus 14 second-chance points to 8. The first half was turnovers and threes. The second half was the paint and the starters, and almost nobody else.

Before tip, the league posted Maxey jumping into James’ first Sixers chalk toss. It played as a gag. It also played as a tell. James is the reason the building sold out a Thursday in October. Maxey is the reason the second half had a pulse. Those can both be true in the same box score, and they were.

The Last Time Philadelphia Climbed Out of a Hole This Deep

The franchise’s last climb of this size sits outside the play-by-play era. On March 25, 1988, the 76ers trailed Boston by 30, 75-45 with 7:31 left in the third, then won 97-93. Maurice Cheeks scored the go-ahead basket with nine seconds left and ended a 15-game road losing streak against the Celtics. Inside the tracked era, the previous high was 26 points against the Indiana Pacers on Nov. 14, 2008.

Maxey’s own halftime speech was simpler than a record book. “Are we going to be some front-runners and only be happy when stuff is good?” he said. “Or when stuff is bad, are we going to fight and be resilient? And we did that.” Brown put the same idea in coach-speak: response is 80 percent of the year, and going down 30 without pointing fingers was the sign he wanted. Embiid, who has seen a lot of nights in this building, put this one in his top three since he arrived.

James, who now has a comeback record to go with a new city, was the one who refused to dress it up as a plan. “You don’t want to rely on that,” he said. “I think it’s great to know deep down we’re not going to have that quit mentality, but you don’t want to put yourself in too many of those situations.” Through two games he is still talking like a man on a two-year deal who has already seen how these superstar mashups die in March if the first 20 minutes look like Thursday’s.

Milwaukee Is Next, and the Minutes Will Not Shrink

Philadelphia is 2-0 and listed first in the East, with wins over the defending champion Knicks and Cleveland. The Sixers host Milwaukee on Oct. 24 at 7:30 p.m. ET, then Detroit on Oct. 25. Embiid told reporters after the Cavaliers game he would play only one half of that back-to-back and sit the Pistons. Maxey just logged 39:34 and 41:39 to open the year. That is the tax of being the guard everyone else watches until they join in.

Cleveland is 0-1 after a 16-point fourth and six Harden turnovers, with Mitchell’s 32 unable to cover a second-half offense that stopped going through Allen after he scored 14 before the break and zero after it. Atkinson will have film. Nurse already has his clip: Maxey on the ball, five starters in double figures, a building that came to see James and left yelling for the kid who used to share a backcourt with the other guy in the shove.

James got the largest comeback win of his career and a home debut he called a hell of a night. Maxey got 32, the stop on Harden, the finger-roll that made it nine, and the chants. The record book can hold both. The jumbotron, for one fourth quarter, only held one of them.