(AP)

The 76ers’ Tony Wroten will not travel with the team for a three-game roadtrip that begins Saturday in Chicago, said coach Brett Brown.

The sixth man-turned-spot starter went down with a right ankle sprain midway through the fourth quarter. X-rays on his ankle came back negative, according to a team rep. He was navigating the locker room on crutches.

While driving the lane with 6:01 remaining, Wroten stepped on the foot of New York Knicks guard Iman Shumpert and crumpled. Wroten remained on the floor, grabbing at his right foot while teammates surrounded him. The second-year guard did not return to the game.

“It was a big sprain. Just got to take it one day at a time, really,” said Wroten, who had 12 points and four assists. “It’s a high ankle sprain. Tough to put weight on it.”

The roadtrip starts Saturday at Chicago and also includes games Monday at San Antonio and Wednesday at Houston. It’s not entirely inconceivable that the 20-year-old Wroten could join his teammates somewhere along the way.

Winning with Wroten was difficult enough. Winning without him will be a challenge. The Sixers (15-54) have lost 23 in a row, and are three wins shy of matching the league’s record for the longest losing streak.

Wroten was asked if you can ever get used to losing.

“Hell no,” he said. “I’m never used to losing. I speak for the team. We’re never used to losing. There’s no such thing as getting used to losing. I never come into a game talking about, ‘I hope we lose. Let’s just play.’ No. We come into the game, every game, trying to win. Just speaking for myself, no matter how many times we lose, no matter how many times we lose in a row, you can never get used to losing. I’m pretty sure my teammates would agree. I’m not worried about no (number of) losses in a row. It happens. About the NBA, there’s a game the next day.”

(Associated Press)

With 2:30 to go in the first quarter Sunday, Evan Turner didn't like a traveling call directed toward him. He said something – and it didn't really matter what it was – toward the official, and got a technical foul because of it.

Whoops.

A day later, Sixers coach Doug Collins called Turner's reaction “that little meltdown,” then lauded the emotional reaction of his third-year swingman in the Sixers' loss to the New York Knicks, a game that feature plenty of hot-blooded plays.

An excitable player with the tendency to get riled up, Turner admitted afterward that he was remorseful for getting T'd up. He said he shouldn't have let a silly call like traveling get the best of him.

Still, it wasn't enough to rile up Collins. Well, kind of.

“I was trying to get him off the floor. I was trying hard,” Collins said of Turner. “He got it and I said, 'Evan, I told you,' and he said, 'I got it now.' I said, 'Yeah, I know. Now.'

“The one thing about Evan, and I told him this, is I admire his competitive nature. Evan would take on the other team by himself if he could and I love that about him, but I don't want him to feel like he has to do that.”

The Sixers (22-32) are back in action Tuesday against visiting Orlando, and they desperately need a win in this one. Collins' crew is on a five-game skid, matching their longest losing streak of the season. The loss against the Knicks dropped the Sixers into a tie for last place in the Atlantic Division with Toronto, and put the Sixers 10 games under the .500 mark for the first time since 2010-11, when they opened Collins' first season at the helm with a 3-13 mark.

(Associated Press)

Saturday, Jrue Holiday had a Jrue Holiday-type game, which meant everyone was talking about Jrue Holiday. Understandably, right?

Holiday dumped in a career-best 35 points in the Sixers' 97-80 win over the New York Knicks. With Sixers coach Doug Collins unavailable due to health reasons, assistant coach Michael Curry handled questions about Holiday. Here was one of Curry's replies:

“It's good for the organization to have a young guy that comes in and a young guy that can play with Andrew (Bynum) for a long time. That's good for us,” Curry said. “That's good for confidence and when you're bringing guys in in the future, they want to play with those guys.”

Whoa. Hold the phone here. Curry said what?

To date, no one from within the Sixers' organization has said anything about Bynum long-term. Every question has been answered in the same guarded way, that they're waiting and hoping, praying and finger-crossing, that Bynum returns to the court and debuts for the Sixers sooner than later.

That someone mentioned Bynum in the same breath as the term “long time” is kind of a revelation. What does it mean? Nothing much. It's a postgame quote lauding the play of one star with the mention of another. Does it mean the Sixers have had internal discussions about Bynum returning? You could have made those assumptions long before those words left Curry's lips.

But it's certainly news – or, at the very least, new – that someone views Bynum in that light.