Reporting note: this article draws on gmanetwork.com; PGLive provides the summary and editorial framing.
The 2026-27 season opened on October 20 with three games, and the NBA opening night scores in the source report cover two finished results and one still in progress: Detroit Pistons 121-113 Boston Celtics, Philadelphia 76ers 106-100 New York Knicks, and Oklahoma City Thunder vs Spurs listed as ongoing. The report named those three games for the opening slate and nothing else.
NBA opening night scores across three games
Two teams left with wins and one matchup was left unresolved when the scores were published. Detroit and Philadelphia both started the season ahead of their opponents; Oklahoma City and San Antonio were still playing, with no final figure attached to the fixture.
What the numbers do not show is how differently the two decided games were won. One was a comeback built on a single sustained burst, the other a grind that held a six-point edge at the end, and the difference matters for how each winner's night should be read.
Detroit Pistons 121, Boston Celtics 113
Detroit's win turned on a 23-0 run, according to a separate report on the game, a stretch that rearranged Boston's defensive architecture the way a removed load-bearing wall rearranges a room. The first help rotation arrived a beat late; the second never arrived at all, and the Celtics' shell stayed open long enough for the Pistons to keep scoring inside it.
On the floor, Boston's sneakers squeaked a fraction behind the play, the sound of a section reading one bar late while the phrase moved on without it. That is what a run of that length looks like from the defensive end: not a collapse in effort but a rotation that keeps arriving after the ball has already left.
The final margin of eight points is the residue of that one stretch rather than a summary of the whole game. Boston's response afterward was enough to keep the score respectable, but not enough to close a gap built in a single sustained passage of play.
Philadelphia 76ers 106, New York Knicks 100
Tyrese Maxey scored a game-high 28 points, according to the related report, and Philadelphia spoiled New York's ring and banner-raising ceremony in the season opener for both teams. LeBron James made his 76ers debut in the same game, opening his record-extending 24th season in hostile territory in New York.
The scoreline stayed close enough that the last possessions carried weight, and the 76ers' advantage held at six when the clock ran out. For a Philadelphia side introducing a new era around James and Maxey, winning on the night New York raised its banner is a specific kind of statement, delivered in the building least inclined to applaud it.
For the Knicks, the ceremony came first and the result came second, which is the order nobody in the arena wanted. The defensive rotations that held for long stretches did not hold on the possessions that decided it.
Oklahoma City Thunder vs San Antonio Spurs
The source listed Thunder vs Spurs as ongoing, with no final score at publication. No partial score, quarter breakdown or leading scorer was included, so the result of that game remains open here rather than guessed at.
That leaves the opening night picture incomplete by one game. The two results that are settled stand on their own; the third will need its own report before anything can be said about how Oklahoma City or San Antonio began the season.
The original report was published by gmanetwork.com.
