The NBA had just two games played last night, but two second-round picks made their mark with big opportunities.

Philadelphia entered last season with championship aspirations after signing star forward Paul George to a four-year, $211.58 million max deal in July 2024, per Spotrac. That move gave the club two All-NBA talents in him and Embiid, as well as a 2024 All-Star in Maxey.

The Rockets and Thunder may have just given us the best season opener in NBA history. Houston controlled most of regulation, but Shai Gilgeous-Alexander got hot in the fourth quarter to send the game to overtime.

NBA Stat: Last night, Steph Curry tied Kevin Durant for most career 40-point games: 1. Wilt Chamberlain 271 2. Michael Jordan 173 3. Kobe Bryant 122 4. James Harden 105 5. Elgin Baylor 88 6. LeBron James 79 7. Allen Iverson 79 8. Oscar Robertson 77 9. Stephen Curry 72 9. Kevin Durant 72 #NBA

PHILADELPHIA — When a team with so much expectation for a season goes through 82 games and wins 24 of them, the next year can go a couple of ways. The spiral could continue. The frustration can linger. And almost everything can fall apart. Or maybe reinforcements can be made and lessons can be learned.

NBC's broadcast of the NBA tip-off was up 87% in viewers compared to last year and marked the season opener's biggest audience in more than a decade.

New York, Golden State, Denver and Cleveland round out the top five, but there is a lot of movement this week.

The NBA’s action-packed opening-night doubleheader across NBC and Peacock drove massive engagement on social media last night, dominating the conversation on X: Opening night resulted in the league’s most-viewed tip-off ever with more than 600 million views and counting across all owned and third-party social accounts (source: Videocites).