PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia 76ers entered Friday’s contest with the Sacramento Kings on a 3-game losing skid. The Sixers were facing a tough opponent and they needed to find a way to get off the schneid and earn a victory.
They were able to do so as they knocked off the Kings 112-93 and led by as many as 22 on the night. Tobias Harris is going to get the headlines with his 37 points on 14-for-25 night, but the Sixers received some big performances from Paul Reed and Mo Bamba in the absence of Joel Embiid.
Reed had eight points, seven rebounds, and three blocks while Bamba hopped off the bench and poured in 11 and four blocks. It was an important effort on a night when the Sixers needed strong efforts from everybody in the absence of the big fella for the third consecutive game.
“Active! Active,” Tyrese Maxey said of the big men after the win. “I told P-Reed. Listen, I’ve been with you for three years and I’ve seen you go get every offensive rebound, every defensive rebound block every shot, get steals, I want you to get back to that because that’s who you are, and that’s just a conversation that you can have with somebody when you have a good relationship with him.”
Maxey and Reed were a part of the same 2020 draft class and they know each other very well. That is where the rising star is able to step in and demand more out of him.
“He told me he got me he was extremely aggressive,” Maxey continued. “Mo Bamba? Huge. Huge. He came right in the game and blocked like two or three shots in a row. He played extremely hard. Defended (Domantas) Sabonis. Defended Alex Len and then protected the rim I keep talking about it. When Jo goes out is, those guys step up because of that. Joel protects a lot of us. When they get downhill, he’s cleaned up at the rim, and those guys have to do the same thing.”
The rim protection has been a big problem with Embiid out. With Reed and Bamba stepping up to combine for seven blocks, the Sixers were able to have a lot of success in that department.
“It was excellent,” Harris added of their play. “I think their energy, their effort. I think Paul just did a great job of keeping the game simple. Going out there and fueling us with his energy. The way that both of them were able to protect the rim was big for us and not to say that’s been missing, but with Joel out, that effort has to be brought to a higher level every single night and they stepped up for the challenge.”
Still thinking about this sequence from the first half where Paul Reed volleyball spiked Monk's floater and Tobias hit a 3 in transition. pic.twitter.com/52eO6jtesv
— Daniel Olinger (@dan_olinger) January 13, 2024
Bamba, especially, made the Kings think multiple times about trying him at the basket.
“Mo, when he’s giving a great effort, he can do some stuff, right?” added coach Nick Nurse. “He’s going to block some shots. He’s going to affect some shots. He’s going to rebound the ball so he needs to play with maximum effort. When he does, he does.”
A big key to Bamba’s big night could be Nurse’s decision to change his stints in terms of how many consecutive minutes he plays.
“I said before the game I was gonna try to cut his stints down,” Nurse explained. “So he could—I just said ‘Listen. Think about four minutes of just going everything you got and then I’ll get you out and bring you back instead of an eight minute stint. I’ll give you two fours’. I think he ended up playing a long stint there because he was with a group that was really rolling there in the second half, but he was alright, right? He lines up those 3s, you’re kind of expecting him to make them now, too.”
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