NBA season opener: Celtics, Warriors both victorious

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The 2018-19 NBA regular season officially started on Tuesday with two games. The Boston Celtics at home took an easy win of 105-87 against the Philadelphia 76ers, while the Golden State Warriors defeated the Oklahoma City Thunder at the Oracle Arena 108-100.

Boston dominant at TD Garden

The Boston Celtics take an easy win in their first game of the 2018-19 season. /VCG Photo

The Celtics and the 76ers, the two teams that met in the Eastern Conference semi-finals last season, confronted each other again on Tuesday. Boston had two of its stars on the court – Gordan Hayward, who was out all last season after getting hurt in the season opener last year, and Kyrie Irving who missed the playoffs. Philadelphia saw the return of Markelle Fultz, a promising player selected by the team with the first overall pick in the 2017 NBA Draft.

Like usual, most of the two teams' players were still trying to get their sense of the game back and thus kept missing shots. The Celtics with an obvious intention to speed up the pace paid the price with increasing turnovers. Second-year player Jason Tatum led Boston's offense by scoring 9 of their 11 points.

Jason Tatum #0 carries Boston's attack with a team high of 23 points. /VCG Photo

The 76ers in defense relied on their center Joel Embiid and put Ben Simmons in charge of offense. After a 21-21 first quarter, Philadelphia found that they could not stop Boston without Embiid and thus had to change the usual plan of rotation, which ended up hurting them on offense.

The Celtics led by five after the first half, though Kyrie Irving missed all of his eight attempts.

Both sides changed their first squads in the second half. The 76ers replaced Fultz who mostly had disappeared in the game with J.J. Redick. The Celtics sent another center Aron Baynes to replace Hayward.

Joel Embiid #21 is stopped in the second half as the Celtics change their tactics against him in both defense and offense. /VCG Photo

Boston's tactics worked immediately as they made it difficult for Embiid to attack the rim in front of two big men. On offense, they requested everyone confronting Embiid after switch attack him with no hesitation. Moreover, the Celtics' bench players contributed more than their Philadelphia counterparts. All these brought a big win for Boston at home.

Boston's Tatum scored the team's highest 23 points while Marcus Morris led the bench group with 16 points and 10 rebounds. Embiid scored 23 points and 10 rebounds while Simmons got 19 points, 15 rebound and 8 assists for Philadelphia.

Golden State wins first opener in three years

The Golden State Warriors show their 2017-18 championship rings. /VCG Photo

The Warriors received their championship rings at home before meeting the Thunders, who had to play without Russell Westbrook and Andrew Robertson – both out due to injuries.

With Dennis Schroder as the first-line-up point guard, OKC could not launch an effective offense as they couldn't deliver the ball the way they wanted. The Warriors started focused enough on defense which led to more transition offense opportunities. After the first half, Golden State led 57-47 against Oklahoma City.

The Thunder made changes in the third quarter. They gave the ball to All-Star forward Paul George who's a bigger threat on offense while the whole team became more determined with their attack. After making multiple three-pointers, OKC launched a 22-11 tide in less than six minutes. George scored 15 points in the third quarter.

Kevin Durant #35 is always a reliable option in offense for Golden State. /VCG Photo

The Warriors got careless on defense and missed 10 three-pointers in a row in the second half. However, they still had Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant who watered down OKC's counter strike and took back the lead with their extraordinary individual abilities. In the end, Golden State won the game 108-100 after losing two openers (100-129 to the San Antonio Spurs in 2016-17 and 121-122 to the Houston Rockets in 2017-18) in the past two seasons.

Curry scored the Warriors' highest 32 points with eight rebounds and nine assists while Durant took 27 points, eight rebounds and six assists. George and Schroder scored respectively 27 and 21 points for Oklahoma City.