PHILADELPHIA — Paul George went back to being a nonfactor in regards to scoring while playing with Joel Embiid. The 76ers showed they can come out on fire from the 3-point line, and Ricky Council IV needs more minutes. Those three things stood out in the Sixers’ 108-98 victory over the Charlotte Hornets at the Wells Fargo Center.

George’s...Read more

MIAMI — Ultimately, this was a stomach-turning, painful reminder of the level of competition in the NBA — particularly for Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo.

Faced with the challenge of the best of the NBA West, the Miami Heat wound up shorthanded and came up short Friday night in a 104-97 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder at Kaseya Center.

...Read more

LAS VEGAS — The NBA Cup championship game was played before a sold-out crowd Tuesday at T-Mobile Arena, but it’s no slam dunk the event will return to Las Vegas.

The Milwaukee Bucks defeated the Oklahoma City Thunder, 97-81, in the final, the last of three games in Las Vegas tied to the league’s in-season tournament. The games — two ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Naz Reid saw it. Anthony Edwards saw it, too. So did the thousands of fans packing the Target Center, their eyes locked on Julius Randle as Karl-Anthony Towns made his highly anticipated return to Minnesota on Thursday.

Randle stood in the paint, swarmed by three Knicks defenders. The open man was there — two of them, in fact....Read more

Let’s start with the good news:

The Dennis Schröder era — if you can call it an era — can only get better from here.

That’s because Schröder’s first game with the Warriors went as poorly as any game the Warriors have played in recent years.

Golden State lost by 51 to the Grizzlies in Memphis, Tenn., on Thursday night, and that ...Read more

MIAMI — The back-to-back set on Friday night against the Oklahoma City Thunder and Saturday night at the Orlando Magic already made for a hectic weekend for the Miami Heat. But coach Erik Spoelstra is taking it a step further, actually several strides farther, with what he already views as a victory on Sunday.

In the midst of a hectic portion...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Grainy game footage and yellowed newspaper clippings confer UCLA's standing as college basketball royalty, the team's status as a blue blood rooted in the success of a coach who retired nearly 50 years ago.

John Wooden's 10 national championships in a 12-year span are more than any other program has won in its history. On the ...Read more

The Denver Nuggets’ flare for the dramatic seems unlikely to go away any time soon. Generally this season, it has worked out in their favor. Not on Thursday.

Anfernee Simons drove to his right for a game-winning layup as time expired, handing the Nuggets their 11th loss of the season after they had erased a 17-point gap in the fourth quarter....Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Karl-Anthony Towns sat on the opposing bench Thursday as his new team’s starting lineup was announced. After the first four starters came to the floor, the Target Center scoreboard played a 90-second tribute video of some of Towns’ career highlights.

Towns soaked it all in, then soaked up a large ovation from the crowd as ...Read more

SACRAMENTO — Midway through the first quarter Thursday night, LeBron James checked out against the Sacramento Kings, walking to the bench in the city where he played his first NBA regular season minutes more than 21 years ago.

It would be his last walk off the court before achieving another milestone. By the time his next shift ended in the ...Read more

BOSTON — The Chicago Bulls beat the Boston Celtics at their own game Thursday night in a battle of the NBA’s two most prolific 3-point shooting teams.

Chicago rode a 15-point advantage from beyond the arc to a 117-108 victory at TD Garden, with the typically sharp-shooting Celtics making just 14 of their 56 3-point attempts (a season-worst ...Read more

DETROIT — The Detroit Pistons recently revealed their aspirations to end their five-year playoff drought. This season, the Pistons have appeared to be on the right track at times, but they have also had several games in which they looked far from achieving their goal.

Thursday night inside Little Caesars Arena, the Pistons looked like a team ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — During Thursday morning shootaround, Magic coach Jamahl Mosley twice described Oklahoma City‘s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as a league MVP candidate.

The two-time All-NBA guard backed up the high praise he received with a game-high 35 points during the Thunder’s 105-99 victory in front of a national TV audience on TNT at Kia ...Read more

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Dennis Schroder got traded from a team that’s trying to lose to one failing to put the winning ways of their early-season halcyon days back in the bottle.

If they play like they did on Thursday, the Warriors’ bottle is shattered.

The 51-point margin of defeat is tied for the fourth-biggest blowout loss in franchise ...Read more

NEW YORK — Nic Claxton was not on the court for long in the Nets‘ 101-94 defeat of the Toronto Raptors on Thursday at Scotiabank Arena. After being intentionally fouled by Kelly Olynyk on a drive to the hoop with 8:46 left in the second quarter, a frustrated Claxton tossed the ball into the stands.

Claxton seemed like he was still mad about...Read more

BOSTON — Joe Mazzulla and the Celtics prioritized support for the members of the organization who were affected by a pair of break-ins during the team’s recent trip to Washington, D.C.

Jaylen Brown’s mother’s house in Wellesley and the Newton home of assistant coach Amile Jefferson both were targeted by intruders Sunday night, while the...Read more

PHILADELPHIA — Sixers center Andre Drummond, a two-time NBA All-Star with the Detroit Pistons, doesn’t have a problem with the new format for the 2025 All-Star Game.

Instead of a single game and two teams, the event will feature three games and a four-team tournament on Feb. 16 at the Chase Center in San Francisco.

“I think it’s cool,�...Read more

At $9.1 billion, the Warriors are the most valuable NBA franchise and the second-highest valued organization in all of U.S. professional sports, according to an annual valuation from Sportico.

Only the Dallas Cowboys are worth more than Golden State, according to both Sportico and Forbes, which valued the Warriors at $8.8 billion in October. ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — Paolo Banchero was wearing bright, highlighter green shoes in an all-black athletic outfit when he was slowing moving his left and right arms up and down one at a time with a small orange exercise ball in his hands.

Slowly and surely, Banchero went through a variety of light stretching drills under the watchful eye of Todor ...Read more