LeBron's Sixers Home Debut Hit Halftime Down 24

LeBron James made his Sixers home debut on Thursday, October 22, against the Cleveland Cavaliers, the team he played for across two stints and 11 seasons and carried to the 2016 NBA championship. At halftime at Xfinity Mobile Arena, Cleveland led 69 to 45, and five of Philadelphia's 14 first half turnovers were his. The hole was a ball security problem before it was a talent problem, and the opening minutes of the third quarter showed it.

This piece covers the first half and the start of the third quarter, the stretch the live reporting had in hand when it was written. Tip was 7pm ET on ESPN. The night was also the first home game in Philadelphia for Jaylen Brown, who made his home debut alongside James.

69 to 45 at the Half Was a Turnover Problem

Cleveland's 24 point halftime lead came with 14 Sixers giveaways, five of them James', according to NBC Philadelphia's live updates. A team that gives the ball away 14 times in 24 minutes does not have to be outplayed to trail by two dozen.

The number reads sharper against the season opener. Two nights earlier, on October 20 at Madison Square Garden, the Sixers beat the Knicks 106 to 100 with James at 14 points, nine rebounds and six assists. Brown hit a buzzer beating three off a screen from Joel Embiid to send Philadelphia into the fourth quarter up 83 to 76. Philadelphia scored 106 on the road in New York. Against Cleveland it scored 45 in a half.

Donovan Mitchell Had 22 in 16 Minutes

Donovan Mitchell scored 22 points in 16 first half minutes, better than a point and a third every minute he was on the floor, per NBC Philadelphia's live updates. That is almost a third of the 69 Cleveland put up before the break, from one guard.

Mitchell's 22 is not a turnover story. Some of it is a guard shooting well, and no amount of ball security changes that. What the giveaways did was hand a hot guard extra possessions to use. It also gave Cleveland, the franchise James left twice, a 69 to 45 cushion on the night he first played at home in Philadelphia.

28 to 11 Is How the Third Quarter Answered

The Sixers opened the third quarter on a 28 to 11 run and cut Cleveland's 24 point lead to seven in about seven minutes of play, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Run the arithmetic from the halftime score and it puts Cleveland ahead 80 to 73 at that point, with the South Philly crowd back in the game.

Twenty eight points in about seven minutes is a pace of four a minute, and an offense scoring at that pace was not broken at halftime. The first half was a possession problem. The third quarter showed what Philadelphia looks like when possessions end in shots.

The fair counterpoint is that a 24 point hole is a lot of ground to cover against a team with a guard scoring at Mitchell's rate, and a run that gets it to seven is not a lead. Coach Nick Nurse had spoken after the Knicks win about how the early weeks had gone. "It's certainly been fun these first few weeks," he said. "These guys have been really great." A home opener that begins 24 down is the first test of how far that holds.

Ninety Days Separate the Contract From the Court

Ninety days passed between the report that James was joining Philadelphia and the night he played at home. Agent Rich Paul confirmed to ESPN on July 24 that James was taking the veteran minimum, a two year, $8 million contract after he earned $52.6 million with the Lakers last season.

Three days later the Sixers unveiled his number, publishing a photograph of a blue No. 23 jersey hanging in a locker beside a crown, captioned with only a crown emoji. The post passed nine million views. On September 28, at media day in Camden, New Jersey, he appeared publicly in the number 23 uniform for the first time, ahead of his 24th NBA season, as the media day report recorded.

The shoes arrived on their own schedule. In August he wear tested the unreleased Nike LeBron 24 with Tyrese Maxey and Dwyane Wade, a shoe that drops the LeBron 23's carbon fiber crown containment cage for a single piece upper, and James called it the lightest LeBron shoe. The LeBron 24 wear test put Maxey, now his teammate, on the court beside him two months before the home opener.

So the timeline reads like this. A crown emoji on July 27. A jersey in Camden on September 28. A 24 point halftime deficit on October 22, with five of the 14 turnovers his. And by the seventh minute of the third quarter, a deficit of seven.