PHILADELPHIA -- The Philadelphia 76ers finally won a basketball game Friday night, beating the Brooklyn Nets 95-89 to snap a 13-game losing.

"It seems like forever," center Nerlens Noel said, when informed that Philadelphia's last victory, also over Brooklyn, had come on Feb. 6.

It also seemed like the Sixers were running out of players. The team announced earlier in the day that rookie center Jahlil Okafor needs minor knee surgery and will miss the rest of the season, and Philadelphia then lost three players to injury in the third quarter, two of them -- starting forwards Robert Covington and Jerami Grant -- on a single sequence.

Covington was strapped to a backboard by medical personnel and taken by ambulance to Jefferson Hospital, where he was being evaluated for a possible neck injury. Sixers coach Brett Brown described it as "precautionary stuff" after the game, but had no further update.

Grant was evaluated for a possible concussion.

"When you see a player, a teammate, a friend being taken off the court on a stretcher, it's different than somebody walking off the court with a sprained ankle," Brown said.

That being the case, Brown found his team's effort gratifying.

"I thought there was grit," he said. "I thought there was fight. There was no back-down."

Seldom-used forward Carl Landry scored 16 points and Noel added 13 points, 11 rebounds and three blocked shots for the Sixers, who improved to 9-56. Owners of the NBA's worst record, they can no do no worse than equal the worst full-season record in league history, the 9-73 mark of Philadelphia's 1972-73 team.

The Sixers never trailed. They led by 19 points in the second quarter, 15 in the third and 11 with 6:46 left in the game.

Brooklyn crept within four, 87-83, on a 3-pointer by Wayne Ellington with 4:16 remaining, but Landry then sandwiched baskets around a free throw by Brook Lopez, and a layup by Noel gave Philadelphia a 93-84 lead with 1:40 to play.

Landry, appearing in just his 23rd game of the season, scored half his points in the fourth quarter.

"When I get an opportunity, I try to make the best of it," he said. "I've gotten a lot of DNPs (Did Not Plays), for whatever reason, but at the same time I'm a team player. My job is to stay ready, and I do everything that I possibly can to stay ready."

Brown, for one, appreciates Landry's professionalism.

"He's earned the right to have good things happen," he said.

Okafor, Philadelphia's leading scorer (17.5 points per game), will undergo surgery to repair a small tear of the meniscus in his right knee, according to a team announcement. He had not played the previous five games.

Covington and Grant were injured with 9:40 left in the third quarter. Nets guard Donald Sloan, driving from the left corner and passing to teammate Thaddeus Young under the basket, accidentally undercut a leaping Grant, whose right foot caught Covington in the face.

Covington and Grant both fell to the floor, and Young fell on Grant's head.

Covington stayed down for several minutes while medical personnel tended to him, then was strapped to a backboard and wheeled off on a gurney.

Backup forward Richaun Holmes was also lost with a strained right Achilles in the third quarter.

Lopez scored 24 points and Young had 21 for Brooklyn (18-47), which lost for the fifth time in six games. The Nets went 3-6 on a nine-game, 18-day road trip.

"They deserved to win," Brooklyn interim coach Tony Brown said of the Sixers. "We didn't play our best basketball, obviously. We didn't shoot it great and we didn't defend them at all."

The Sixers shot 45.2 percent from the floor, while the Nets made 37.9 percent of their attempts.

Philadelphia drilled seven of its first 14 3-point attempts, four of those (in as many tries) by Covington, to assume a 52-33 lead late in the first half. The Nets answered with a 12-1 rush at the end of the half, one featuring eight points from Sloan, to close the gap to 53-45.

Covington finished the half with those 12 points. Young had 11 and Lopez 10 to pace Brooklyn.

NOTES: Sixers coach Brett Brown said before the game that the surgery to repair C Jahlil Okafor's torn right meniscus is "a 10-minute procedure" that is "very common among NBA players." Okafor said he is not certain when the surgery will be performed, only that it will be soon, and added that learning the results of Tuesday's CT scan was "kind of a sigh of relief because I was able to know exactly what was going on with my knee and that it was something minor." ... Nets interim coach Tony Brown likes what he has seen so far of rookie G Sean Kilpatrick, who was signed to a second 10-day contract on Wednesday. "He's hungry, wants to be in the league and he's showing that with his effort on the court," Brown said. "Obviously, he's been a scorer down in the D-League and he's brought that up to the NBA." Kilpatrick notched 10 points while playing nearly 24 minutes off the bench Friday.