The Philadelphia 76ers looked to finish their four-game road trip at .500 when played the Sacramento Kings on Monday. The Sixers picked up an impressive win over the Los Angeles Clippers on Sunday to give themselves the chance against the Kings.
However, outside of Tyrese Maxey, Monday night was a struggle.
Maxey scored Philadelphia’s first 16 points, 21 in the first quarter and outscored the Kings by himself at one point. However, Sacramento still led by six after one quarter and then found a way to slow Maxey. As a result, it walked away with a 108-96 win.
After the hot start, the Kings held Maxey to eight points the rest of the way. Philadelphia couldn’t take advantage of the constant blitzing defense Sacramento threw at him.
“They started blitzing everything with him and we didn’t do a great job of taking advantage of that,” coach Nick Nurse told reporters after the loss. “We’ve been really, really good at it lately and tonight (Monday), we weren’t as good so that’s it. They put two on him. Even if we weren’t sending a ball screen, they were sending two guys on him to take it out of his hands and we just didn’t make them pay enough around the perimeter.”
On the night, the Sixers shot 41.5% from the floor. The next highest scorer was Tobias Harris with 12 points.
On the flip side, Philadelphia was solid on the defensive end. Kings star Domantas Sabonis had a triple-double, but he shot 3-for-5 from the floor for 11 points. Malik Monk shot 4-for-11, while De’Aaron Fox still had 23, but Sacramento as a whole shot 44.2% from the floor. That’s respectable defense.
Despite that effort, the Kings built a 22-point lead because the Sixers just couldn’t find a rhythm outside of Maxey.
“I thought, again, we did a good job of some of the things we wanted to do tonight,” Nurse added. “We kept Sabonis in check. We kept Monk in check pretty good. I mean, Fox was really fast and good tonight, but we did execute most of the stuff we were trying to execute tonight. We just didn’t get enough on offense again.”
That was a theme of the road trip. Philadelphia’s defensive effort in all four games was good enough to win. However, it wasn’t there offensively. A big matchup with the Clippers looms on Wednesday back at home.
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