Minus three starters, the Sixers beat the Sacramento Kings, 129-105

Minus three starters, the 76ers were still able to take advantage of facing the NBA’s worst defensive team.

The depleted lineup set the tone early with a 42-21 first-quarter advantage and coasted against the defensive deficient Sacramento Kings with a convincing 129-105 win Saturday night at the Wells Fargo Center.

Less than an hour before the game, the Sixers announced that Ben Simmons would be sidelined because of left knee soreness. Simmons joined starters Joel Embiid and Seth Curry on the sidelines.

Embiid missed his fourth straight game with a bone bruise in his left knee. Curry was out with a left ankle sprain. Both Embiid and Curry will also be out for Sunday’s game in Madison Square Garden against the New York Knicks. Coach Doc Rivers said after the game that he didn’t know about Simmons’ availability for Sunday.

“When you think about no Ben, no Joel, and no Seth and we score 129 points, it says a lot about this group, but I thought this was more about our defense,” Rivers said. “They are a good offensive team and I thought defensively we were locked in.”

» READ MORE: Sixers’ D has been a major factor in their strong showing this season

Joining Tobias Harris and Danny Green in the starting lineup were center Tony Bradley, and guards Matisse Thybulle and Shake Milton, usually the Sixers’ sixth man.

Harris came close to his first-ever triple-double with 29 points, 11 rebounds, and eight assists. Milton, after a slow start, added 28 points. Sacramento was led by Buddy Hield, who scored 25 points, 18 in the first half.

“That is not something, I am not a triple-double chaser,” Harris said. “It is obviously good to play that type of basketball and get a victory; that is the biggest thing I look at.”

The Sixers were coming off Wednesday’s 109-105 overtime loss to Milwaukee, in a game they led by 19 points.

“When we played Milwaukee, we kind of lost our mental focus late in the game and overtime,” Harris said. “Though we were fatigued, I thought our mental focus wasn’t there, so this was a good game to really get ourselves back on track and start this trip off the right way.”

The trip he was referring to is the Sixers’ season-high six-game road trip that begins Sunday in New York.

Sacramento (17-25) entered the game with some momentum, a two-game winning streak with victories on Wednesday in Washington and Friday in Boston.

This is a little familiar, with the Kings having momentum entering a game against the Sixers earlier this season.

The last time the two teams met, the Kings were 12-11 and riding a four-game winning streak. The Sixers won that game, 119-111, on Feb. 9, the beginning of a nine-game losing skid for Sacramento.

Sacramento entered Saturday’s game dead last in defensive rating, allowing 118.1 points per 100 possessions.

The Sixers (29-13) came out firing, shooting 16-for-26 (61.5%) from the field, including 6 of 8 (75%) from beyond the arc in the first quarter. Green hit all three of his three-point shots and scored 11 first-quarter points. The Sixers are now 15-3 when Green scores 10 or more points. He finished with 18 points.

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The Sixers, who are now 19-4 at home, held serve in the second quarter and led, 73-52, at halftime. Harris had 23 points at intermission. The only reason the Kings weren’t totally out of it by halftime was Hield, who made 6 of 9 shots from three-point range.

The Sixers led by as many as 36 points in the third quarter and took a 106-80 advantage heading into the fourth.

When the Sixers weren’t hitting threes, they were driving freely to the basket. With Sacramento offering such little resistance to the Sixers’ drives, one can see why the Kings are the NBA’s worst defensive team.

Sacramento has the NBA’s longest current playoff drought, 14 seasons. Unless the Kings all of a sudden begin playing better defense, Luke Walton’s crew will again be postseason bystanders.

This ended a four-game homestand and now it is on to the road where the Sixers will be playing until returning to the Wells Fargo Center April 3 against Minnesota.