NUGGETS CLOSER TO TOPPING WEST

The Denver Nuggets continued their march toward taking top seeding in the Western Conference with a 116-111 win over severely shorthanded Philadelphia on Monday, while the Sacramento Kings’ hopes of ending a 16-year playoff drought remained on hold.

Nikola Jokic, the two-time reigning Most Valuable Player (MVP), completed his 29th triple-double of the season with 25 points, 17 rebounds and 12 assists to power Denver, but he was unhappy that the Nuggets let a 20-point fourth-quarter lead dwindle to just three with 28.9 seconds remaining against a Sixers team missing Joel Embiid and James Harden.

“We didn’t do a good job today,” Jokic said. “We had control of the whole game, and then in the fourth quarter, we lost control.”

The Nuggets pushed their lead to three and a half games over Memphis atop the West.

The absence of MVP candidate Embiid took some shine off the contest, but Philadelphia coach Doc Rivers said the decision to hold him out because of a sore calf was “not a hard decision for us.”