Wroten out at least a week as Sixers brace for Mavs

Still searching for their first win, the 76ers lost one of their best players for the next several games.

Leading scorer Tony Wroten will be out at least a week after spraining his right knee late in Wednesday's home loss to Brooklyn.

Without Wroten, the Sixers must face Dallas on Saturday at Wells Fargo Center - the same Mavs who humiliated them, 123-70, in Dallas two weeks ago. That 53-point setback was the franchise's worst since a 56-point loss to the Seattle SuperSonics in 1993.

"I've got to pick up my play, myself. That's pretty obvious," struggling point guard Michael Carter-Williams said of dealing with Wroten's absence against the Mavs. "But other guys will step up. You know we got Jerami [Grant] back. And I think he'll help us out. Other guys will just have to step up."

Grant participated in his first full practice Friday. It was the rookie forward's first full practice since spending the night in the hospital with a full body cramp on the second day of training camp on Oct. 1. Grant, a second-round pick out of Syracuse, had been sidelined with a sprained right ankle and discomfort in his right foot.

Sixers coach Brett Brown said Grant looked good in Friday's practice. He will take Wroten's spot on the 12-man active roster against Dallas. Hollis Thompson is expected to start at shooting guard.

The Sixers are winless through the season's first 15 games, tying the franchise's worst start. A loss to the Mavericks would tie the Sixers with the 1994-95 Los Angeles Clippers for the third-longest winless streak to begin a season. The 2009-10 New Jersey Nets hold the NBA record for the most losses to start a season with 18.

Wroten, at 6-foot-6, 205 pounds, leads the team in scoring (17.9 points per game), assists (6.3), and steals (1.93). He joined Steph Curry, James Harden, Chris Paul, and John Wall as the only players to average at least 17 points, 6 assists, 3 rebounds, and 1.5 steals as of Thursday.

He sprained his knee on a driving layup that pulled his team within one point, 90-89, with 1 minute, 32 seconds left in Wednesday's game. He limped down the court following the basket, but he remained in the game and threw a pass into the stands on the next possession, as the Nets held on to win, 99-91.

"You looked at it, and he said, 'I'm OK.' " Brown said. "But it swelled up after the fact."

The Sixers will reevaluate his knee in a week.

But talk about bad timing. Things were so bad for the Sixers in their first meeting with the Mavericks that Dallas (12-5) could have gone scoreless the entire second half and still won by three.

But Brown thinks this game will be a good barometer of how his team has grown since that first game.

"Just in recent games, I like the direction that we are heading, incrementally," Brown said. "There are signs that the group is highly spirited."

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