Without LeBron James, Philadelphia's remade roster stays perfect

Joel Embiid finished with a triple-double, Jaylen Brown scored 27 points on his 30th birthday, and the Philadelphia 76ers beat the Milwaukee Bucks 127-116 on Saturday night to open the season 3-0 — doing it, notably, without LeBron James, who sat out with lower-back pain management on the first night of a back-to-back. The result, recorded in the league's official game log, left the Bucks winless at 0-3 to start a season in which their roster has been rebuilt almost beyond recognition.

The numbers

Embiid finished with 28 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists, going 12 of 14 from the free-throw line, according to the box score posted on the NBA's official box score page. Tyrese Maxey added 26 points, VJ Edgecombe scored 17 with 13 rebounds, and Brown — acquired by Philadelphia over the summer — hit the three-pointer off a feed from Embiid that completed the center's triple-double and pushed the lead to six. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope later sealed it with a three off a turnover. For Milwaukee, Jaime Jaquez Jr. led all scorers with 21 points, Kel'el Ware had 19 points and 13 rebounds, and Kyle Kuzma added 14 points and 12 rebounds. Philadelphia is 3-0 for the first time in years; Milwaukee has opened 0-3, a reversal for a franchise that made the playoffs each of the past several seasons.

A roster transformed

Neither team much resembles the one that finished last season. Philadelphia traded for Brown, the 2024 NBA Finals MVP, in a deal that sent Paul George and multiple draft picks to Boston, and then signed James as a free agent once he told the Los Angeles Lakers he would leave after more than two decades with the franchise. James, at 41 and in his NBA-record 24th season, is averaging 15.5 points, 9.5 rebounds and 6.0 assists through his first two games in a Sixers uniform, figures confirmed on his official NBA.com player page. He sat out Saturday's game on coach Nick Nurse's call, with the team saying James had not reported any pain or discomfort beforehand; he was expected to play Sunday night against Detroit, the second leg of the back-to-back. Philadelphia is the fourth franchise of James's career, after stints with Cleveland, Miami and the Lakers, and Nurse — who won an NBA title with Toronto in 2019 and is now in his third season coaching the 76ers — is piecing together his first lineup built around Embiid, Brown and James all at once, a three-star core the franchise lacked during Embiid's earlier pairings with James Harden and, before that, Ben Simmons.

Milwaukee's transformation runs the other direction. The Bucks traded Giannis Antetokounmpo to the Miami Heat over the summer, ending an 11-season run that included the franchise's 2021 championship, and received Tyler Herro, Kel'el Ware, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kasparas Jakučionis and draft compensation in return, a deal detailed by outlets including Eurohoops at the time. Herro did not appear in Saturday's box score. Three games in, Milwaukee is already 2.5 games behind Philadelphia in the Eastern Conference, according to the NBA's official standings, and the Bucks' active roster bears almost no resemblance to the one that has anchored Milwaukee's recent playoff runs. Antetokounmpo, a two-time MVP, had been the only constant on Milwaukee's roster through three trips to the playoffs and the franchise's first championship in half a century; his departure leaves Kuzma and Jaquez as the most experienced scorers on a roster still built mostly around the pieces acquired in the trade rather than around a single franchise cornerstone.

Who is affected

For Philadelphia, the early verdict is that the pieces fit. Embiid, who has struggled with injuries that limited him to well under a full slate of games in recent seasons, looked unencumbered running pick-and-roll reads that produced 10 assists — an unusually high number for a center who has more often been the one receiving entry passes than making them. Brown's arrival gives the Sixers a second All-Star wing alongside Maxey, and James, even in a part-time role built around careful scheduling, gives them a third ball-handler capable of initiating offense. Dean Wade, starting in James's place, scored seven points in his first appearance of the season after missing the first two games with an ankle injury, and Labaron Philon Jr., Philadelphia's first-round pick out of Alabama, made his NBA debut.

For Milwaukee, the loss extends a difficult start for a front office trying to retool on the fly. Kuzma and Jaquez were the Bucks' most productive players Saturday, but the team allowed 127 points and could not keep pace once Philadelphia's bench, led by Caldwell-Pope and Anfernee Simons, extended the margin in the fourth quarter.

What's next

Philadelphia continues its back-to-back on Sunday night at home against Detroit, with James expected to be available after Saturday's rest. Milwaukee travels to face Indiana on Monday as it searches for its first win of the season, still trying to find an identity three games into life after Antetokounmpo, with Herro, who did not appear in Saturday's box score, among the pieces the Bucks have yet to see fully on the floor together. For a Sixers team that has already overcome a 29-point deficit against Cleveland earlier this season — by the team's account, the largest comeback of any James team across his 24-year career — the next stretch of games will test whether the newly assembled roster can stay this far ahead of schedule once the November schedule thickens and James's workload is managed more conservatively.