Ice under court causes condensation, postpones Kings-Sixers

A wet floor at Wells Fargo Center has caused Wednesday's game between the Sacramento Kings and Philadelphia 76ers to be postponed.

The game, which was scheduled to tip off at 7 p.m. ET, was called off at 8:03 p.m., according to John Page, the president of the Wells Fargo Center complex in Philadelphia.

A makeup date was not immediately announced.

The Philadelphia Flyers hosted an NHL game at the arena Tuesday night, and the ice surface remained under the basketball court -- standard procedure at the Wells Fargo Center. However, Wednesday was an unseasonably warm, humid day for late November, and that could have affected the surface.

A source told the ThePhiladelphia Inquirer that someone in operations dropped the ball and did not turn down the temperature in the arena.

"With our ice surface, sometimes humidity is our biggest opponent when we prepare for a game,'' Page said. "We've never had an issue before, but we need to make sure we don't have this issue again.''

The Kings, not to mention Sixers center Joel Embiid, took to Twitter to poke fun at the wet floor and the game's postponement.

Sacramento center DeMarcus Cousins said players noticed the court was slippery at Wednesday morning's shootaround. By pregame warmups, the problem had worsened.

"It was pretty bad,'' Cousins said. "I've never seen anything like that before.''

Cousins joined the fruitless effort to prepare the court by pushing around a pair of mops during the delay. He entered the night averaging 35.3 points in his past four games and said he was disappointed the contest was postponed.

"Guys go through their ritual, guys prepare for their games and, like that, they're telling us we're not playing; it's kind of disappointing,'' he said.

"I'm kind of glad it did go this way. Player safety should be considered first. I think they made the right decision."

Fans booed when the postponement was announced.

Sixers CEO Scott O'Neil said tickets to Wednesday's game would be valid for the makeup game, and fans in attendance also would get an additional ticket to another game plus a rebate on parking.

"I know this is a tremendous inconvenience to the fans, so I certainly apologize on behalf of the organization,'' he said.

It's the first postponement in the NBA since the league called off two games on Jan. 23 -- Boston at Philadelphia and Utah at Washington -- because of a winter storm.

Wednesday's game was supposed to mark the first in which the Sixers increased Embiid's minutes restriction to 28. Embiid previously had been restricted to playing 24 minutes per game this season.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.