The 36ers have withstood an early perimeter barrage to comfortably beat the Sydney Kings 87-73 in Saturday night's NBL match in Adelaide.
Jerome Randle had 19 points and 11 assists, while captain Mitch Creek tallied 17 points and seven boards off the bench to help the NBL title favourites to their sixth straight win in front of 8096 fans at Adelaide Arena.
The Kings, who slumped to their seventh loss from their past eight games, came out smoking with four triples inside the opening three minutes. They stormed ahead 15-4 but were barely in the hunt from then despite the best efforts of Tom Garlepp (15 points).
Adelaide closed the gap to 28-25 at quarter-time, then seized the lead early in a scrappy second term when Anthony Drmic nailed his third three-pointer.
The home side were in front at halftime 45-37 as the Kings suddenly went ice cold in attack, going more than five minutes without a score at one stage and connecting on 19 per cent for the term.
The visitors came back in the third to briefly take the lead before the Sixers, with Randle at his brilliant best, moved ahead 68-59 at three-quarter time.
Sydney closed the quarter by conceding eight unanswered points in 78 calamitous seconds, littered with sloppy turnovers, untimely fouls and bad attacking execution in the closing seconds.
Kings coach Andrew Gaze was whistled for a technical foul before big Josh Powell fouled out for the Kings as their frustration - and the margin - continued to swell in the fourth period.
Adelaide coach Joey Wright credited his side's battling effort to claw back the Kings' early lead before stifling the visitors for the next three quarters with their miserly defence.
"At the quarter-time break, we did a great job of fighting back with the position we were in," Wright said.
"We picked it up as the game wore on and our defence got better throughout the game."
Sydney coach Andrew Gaze felt the Kings' error-strewn finish to the third stanza gifted momentum to the 36ers.
"The game was very much in the balance. I thought we did a good job coming out of the halftime break," Gaze said.
"Once we got relatively level (late in the third, we had) some difficult turnovers to recover from and they were good enough to punish us.
"We couldn't recover from that margin so it was very disappointing."
