The Philadelphia 76ers pulled off an improbable comeback win over the Sacramento Kings on Saturday night despite missing Joel Embiid and James Harden. The Sixers trailed by 21 in the first half, they turned the ball over 11 times which led to 21 Sacramento points, and they couldn’t find any rhythm.
In the second half, Tyrese Maxey came out firing as he had 15 points in the third which led to 32 and six assists for the game in order to rally and win it 129-127 in a thriller out at Golden 1 Center.
The Kings didn’t have the same offensive flow after halftime that they did to begin the game as the Sixers took over in the second half. They completely flipped the script and coach Mike Brown had to give all the credit to Philadephia.
“You got to give Philadelphia a lot of credit,” Brown told reporters. “They were short-handed, they came in here, their coaches on the coaching staff to the players, you got to give them all credit. Short-handed, came in here, they just physically kicked our behind. We could not get them off the offensive glass. Montrezl Harrell was an absolute beast. Paul Reed was an absolute beast.”
Harrell had 17 points on 7-for-8 shooting with seven rebounds while Reed was terrific in his minutes off the bench. The energetic forward had some trouble with Domantas Sabonis early, but he finished with nine points and seven rebounds, four of them on the offensive glass, and he had a key rebound late to really seal the win for Philadelphia.
“When you watch the game, some of it was Domantas Sabonis, Chimezie Metu, and Richaun Holmes as our centers, but also our guards did a poor job on the backside when we went to trap the box, to help on a dribble drive,” Brown continued. “We did not get engaged with their bigs on the backside. We didn’t help our bigs at all rebounding and it showed. I mean 23 second chance points ends up to a lot of points. One, two possession ball game and that’s basically where the game was at.”
Despite not having Embiid, the Sixers were able to turn to Harrell and Reed in order to produce and help Philadelphia come out on top.
“Just their ability to control the offensive boards the way they did, and our inability to put bodies on bodies time after time after time as well as to a certain degree control the dribble drive,” Brown finished. “So, give them a lot of credit because they came in here and they took the game from us.”
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