The Philadelphia 76ers continue their West Coast road trip against the Sacramento Kings on Wednesday night, looking to extend their season-best winning streak to five games. The Sixers have been playing better than they have all season of late, having won eight of their last ten games and five in a row heading into Sacramento. The Kings are coming into Wednesday’s game, having beaten the extremely shorthanded Mavericks at home on Monday night after losing six straight games.
Sixers game information
Who: Philadelphia 76ers (13-17) at Sacramento Kings (14-19)
When: 10 p.m. EST
Where: Golden 1 Center, Sacramento CA
Watch: NBA League Pass, NBC Sports Philadelphia & California
Latest on the Sixers
The Sixers will start the new year off without center Joel Embiid, who’s resting a sprained ankle that he initially injured during warmups of the Sixers Christmas Day matchups with the Celtics. Embiid has played through the past three games and looked more like his usual self, but he will be resting tonight as the team takes on the Kings. Without Embiid as well as Andre Drummond listed as questionable, the Sixers will rely on Guerschon Yabusele, but it would be hard to imagine Drummond not playing.
While Embiid has been getting back to his usual self, guard Tyrese Maxey seems to have regained his shooting touch after experiencing some hard times to start the season. Maxey is currently the team’s leading scorer at 25.9 points per game, but he’s averaged 29.4 points over the Sixers’ last five games. More importantly for Maxey and the team, he’s shot 42% on his three-point attempts over the last five games. If the Sixers are going to keep up their winning streak and climb into a playoff position, they’ll need Maxey to continue his sharp shooting ways.
The person who truly needs to find his shooting touch is Paul George. While PG has been doing all he can on the floor defensively, as well as helping on the offensive side, he’s been shooting just 40.3% from the field and a woeful 28.8% on his three-pointers over the last ten games.
With the contract that he signed as a free agent over the summer, huge strides for the team were expected, and PG had a rough start to his tenure in Philadelphia. But, he’s made sure that teams are aware when he’s on the court, and he must be accounted for, even if his shot isn’t falling. This won’t last the whole season, but at some point, George is going to have to start knocking down shots on a consistent basis if the team is going to win.
Latest on the Kings
The Kings are a team in need of some direction, and management thought changes were needed, so they fired their head coach, Mike Brown, last Friday after losing their fifth game in a row. The move didn’t help on Saturday as they lost again to the Lakers, but they came back with a win over the Mavericks on Monday, giving interim head coach Doug Christie his first win as coach.
The Kings have been in a slide since Brown took them to third place in the Western Conference just two seasons ago, then they dropped to ninth place last season despite only winning two fewer games. This year, things have not gone well at all, and the losing streak helped the Kings to 12th place this season.
Replacing a coach just 31 games into a season is never easy and doesn’t always get the results that management may have wanted. (see Doc Rivers taking over the Bucks last season.) The thought, based on players’ comments, is that other teams had figured them out and that they needed to try some new things.
“Teams just got adjusted to us,’ Kings’ guard Malik Monk said of the team’s struggles. “They were surprised when we first came out with Mike, didn’t know how we were playing, didn’t know how we were going to play, and now just feel like they had time to adjust to us and get used to it. So, yeah, we just got to change things up.”
With players like De’Aaron Fox, DeMar DeRozan, and Domantas Sabonis all averaging over 20 points per game, while Sabonis leads the league in rebounding, the Kings have the players to compete; they’ve just not produced the results that they’ve expected (Sounds a lot like the Sixers).
They’ll be looking to change that around and build off the win over the Mavericks on Monday as they’re taking on a Sixers team that will be without their best player. The Kings will still have their hands full with the Sixers, but they should be able to see how the team continues to respond to Christie on the bench.
What to watch for tonight
The Sixers have been winning, and that’s all that matters at this time. Whether Joel Embiid is in or out of the lineup, the team has to keep pushing forward and winning games. Their current four-game winning streak is their longest of the season, and with upcoming games against the Kings, Warriors, Suns, and Nets, they’ll have a chance to get that streak up to eight games, as their opponents are all below .500, except the Warriors that sit at 16-16 on the season.
With Embiid out, there will be a heavy dose of Maxey, which hasn’t scared the Sixers young star one bit, and with his rediscovered shooting touch, Maxey seems back to the level of player he was last year during his breakout season. What Maxey has worked on and shown, especially over the last few games, is a willingness and aggression on defense that has truly helped the team. He’ll need to be at his best if he’s going to slow down Fox, DeRozan, Malik Monk, and Kevin Huerter, who are all talented players who can put up points in a minute.
What the Sixers really need is for Paul George to get his shooting back in line and it could be that the knee injury that kept him out in the preseason and part of the start of the regular season is still bothersome and is affecting his shooting. Whatever the case may be, the team needs him to find his stroke and soon.
What they’ll be looking for tonight is another big night from Kelly Oubre Jr and Guerschon Yabusele, who both had great games against the Trail Blazers. Oubre Jr. had 15 points and 5 rebounds while shooting 60% from the floor, but he had eight steals, and it seemed like there was no way to get a ball past him when he was on defense.
Yabusele has continued to shine as he has all season, despite limited minutes. his 9.8 points and 5.2 rebounds are great for a young man returning to the league. The big thing for the Sixers is that Yabu is shooting 50.25 from the field and 39.3% on his three-point attempts. He’s given the team a valuable frontcourt player, off the bench, that they’ve lacked the past few years.
Prediction
Sixers 117 – Kings 108
