The Philadelphia 76ers will continue their road trip on Saturday when they take on the Phoenix Suns for the third game of a 4-game trip and they will have to do so without the services of their backup point guard.
The Sixers lost Shake Milton to a left ankle sprain that he suffered towards the end of their win over the Sacramento Kings to begin the trip and he missed Thursday’s loss to the Portland Trail Blazers.
He will miss Saturday’s game as well as the conclusion of the trip on Monday against the Utah Jazz.
“My guess is he won’t play on this trip,” said Rivers. “That’s all we know.”
The bench unit could not generate any ball movement without Milton against Portland and that frustrated Rivers.
“Our second unit had one assist,” he said bluntly. “That’s the bottom line and the ball has to move. The ball didn’t move and that’s been one of the problems we’ve had with that unit throughout. They’re all scores in that unit. Tyrese (Maxey) is really a scorer, Tobias (Harris) we use as a scorer, Shake’s a scorer, Furkan’s (Korkmaz) a scorer.”
The key is, once the bench unit gets into a groove with their scoring, that leads to ball movement. They will have to figure it out without Milton to lead on a little bit.
“We need somebody to pass to each other,” Rivers finished. “When they play well, they have artificial ball movement that leads to good ball movement. We have to get him back to doing that more.”
The Sixers and the Suns tipoff at 3 p.m. EST.
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
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