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The Sixers travel to Sacramento Tuesday evening to take on the Kings in another game that has some pretty large tanking implications.
With Minnesota's overtime win against the Utah Jazz last evening, the Sixers are just one game back of the Timberwolves for being tied for the second best lottery odds. A win would obviously pull them within half a game. Sacramento is on the outside looking into the top 5, currently with the 6th best lottery odds. A loss tonight for the Kings would pull them within three games of the Orlando Magic for 5th.
Philadelphia gained a little breathing room in their conquest to stay in the top 3, losing to the Los Angeles Lakers by 14 points on Sunday night. Thomas Robinson continued to strut his stuff in limited minutes, scoring 14 points (7-8 FG) and grabbing 8 rebounds in just over 16 minutes of action. Nerlens Noel chipped in 9 points (4-9 FG), 7 rebounds and 2 blocks; a decent performance, but certainly not up to the superhuman standards he's set over the past few weeks. In the last 10 games, he's averaging 13.4 points on 48.2% shooting, 10.7 rebounds, 2.9 steals and 2.0 blocks. That's freaky.
He'll be faced with the always tough task of DeMarcus Cousins, who will play Tuesday evening despite a calf injury. When the two teams met on March 13th, Cousins exploded for 39 points and 24 rebounds in 114-107 loss. The Kings are most recently coming off of a win at home Sunday night in a 109-86 romp over the Washington Wizards. Rudy Gay led all scorers with 26 points (10-19 FG), and Ben McLemore contributed 17 points of his own.
Other notes:
Robert Covington will start tonight over Jason Richardson. Richardson isn't hurt, the team is just continuing to hold him out of the front end of back-to-backs. He's expected to play tomorrow against Denver.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Coach Brown says JoJo's weight is down and the length of his workouts are increasing.</p>— Max Rappaport (@MaxRappaport) <a href="https://twitter.com/MaxRappaport/status/580433247437496321">March 24, 2015</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>