With hustle and some highlight plays, a cast of hungry understudies brought the energy on Wednesday night, helping the Clippers hold off the Sacramento Kings to snap a three-game losing streak with a 105-89 victory at Golden 1 Center in Sacramento.

The Clippers will head into Christmas with a victory, spurred by a season-high 29 fast-break points, a 43-40 advantage on the boards and a big game from Eric Bledsoe, who started in place of Reggie Jackson (who was placed into COVID-19 health and safety protocols earlier in the day).

Bledsoe finished with 19 points on 8-for-15 shooting, eight rebounds and seven assists, team-highs all.

Proud veteran center Serge Ibaka – who rejoined the rotation only a game ago after Isaiah Hartenstein suffered an ankle sprain – added a season-high 17 points on 7-for-9 shooting.

Off the bench, rookies Brandon Boston Jr. (eight points, four rebounds, two assists), Keon Johnson (four points, three rebounds and a flurry of defensive activity) and two-way wing Amir Coffey (eight points, six rebounds) helped the cause with exactly the type of havoc the Clippers needed.

“They brought a lot of energy,” said Bledsoe, who also finished a season-high plus-20 in the box score. “I think we needed that. Last couple games weren’t high on energy and sometimes that’s all you need from a team, is to come out and play hard.

“Mistakes are gonna happen, but at the same time, we want to create a lot of havoc, because they wanted to go out and show what they can do. So I thought they did a great job coming in and filling the void that we needed, especially with guys going down, they did a great job.”

It was the Clippers’ first victory in three tries against the Kings this season. L.A. lost at Sacramento for the first time in 15 visits in the teams’ previous meeting on Dec. 4.

Some of the Kings’ leading protagonists from those victories weren’t available to take the stage on Wednesday, when they had seven players and head coach Alvin Gentry in the COVID-19 healthy and safety protocols (included among them: star point guard De’Aaron Fox, rookie defensive pest Davion Mitchell and Terence Davis, whose best games this season came against the Clippers, on whom he’d dropped 28 and 23 points.)

The Clippers have their own growing contingent in the protocols, with Jackson joining Marcus Morris Sr. as the Clippers missing time because of a COVID-19 diagnosis.

And then there were the more run-of-the-mill injuries to account for: sizzling sharpshooter Luke Kennard missed his first game of the season, sidelined by hip soreness, and reserve center Isaiah Hartenstein missed his second consecutive game with a sprained ankle. Star forward Kawhi Leonard (ACL) and rookie guard Jason Preston (foot) remain out indefinitely.

Without all of them, Tyronn Lue commemorated the one-year anniversary of his head coaching debut with the Clippers by rolling out his 11th starting lineup this season, and his eighth in the past 11 games.

The Kings wiped out much of the Clippers’ short-lived 19-point lead with an 11-0 run that sliced it to 67-59 with 4:03 left in the third quarter. By the time the quarter ended, the Clippers’ lead was just 74-68.

But in the fourth quarter, a spurt that included a lovely reverse layup from Johnson, a mini Dream Shake from Ibaka and a side-stepping charge to the hoop from Coffey pushed the lead back into double digits at 84-73 with 9:14 left, after which the Clippers never led by fewer than nine points.

“I know we needed this win so bad,” said Ibaka, who believes his four-game ramp-up playing alongside Boston, Coffey and Johnson in the G League paid off Wednesday, when the Clippers’ second unit outscored Sacramento’s 48-18.

“I say, ‘I’m gonna be out there, just try to go out there, play hard and see what happen.’”

What happened was that Ibaka reminded the 15,386 fans in attendance of his varied on-court capabilities.

“Serge was great,” Lue said. “Making two 3s, I thought on the offensive glass, finishing at the rim, and defensively, challenging Tristan (Thompson’s) floaters at the basket, (he) really gave Tristan a hard time down there. And the one he did deflect and block, Tristan made it.

“Serge’s presence was big and huge off the bench and definitely anchored the defense on that second unit.”

And in addition to mounting the season’s best transition attack, outscoring the Kings by 23 points on the fastbreak – just the 10th time this season the Clippers have held the advantage in that regard, they also won the rebounding battle, rare recently.

The Clippers were outrebounded 67-43 in their loss to San Antonio on Monday, when the Spurs also collected 23 offensive rebounds and took a whopping 114 shots. No team had recorded so many rebounds against the Clippers in a regulation game since 1989, and no one had put up so many shots in a non-overtime affair against them since 1991.

So, even short-handed, rebounding was going to be a point of emphasis for the Clippers against the Kings.

With that in mind, Lue said he gave the floor to assistant coach Brian Shaw to do “his little box-out drill again,” in order to try to get the Clippers focused on rebounding execution.

Getting back on track against the Kings seemed like a reasonable possibility; twice this season, the Kings allowed a league-high 68 rebounds (to Memphis and Utah), and entering Wednesday, their opponents were averaging 46.7 rebounds per game, sixth-most in the NBA.

The Clippers’ opponents were averaging even more, however: 47.2, fourth-most in the league. It’s been a telltale problem for Lue’s team, which is giving up a league-worst 50.3 rebounds per game in losses.

And it went much better on Wednesday, when the Clippers played with renewed focus, energy – and perspective, Lue said.

“With the Reggie incident, I think our minds shifted to another situation,” Lue said. “And also with Luke being out, we didn’t really have time to really focus on the San Antonio game once we landed last night and got worried about Reggie so, our whole game plan had to change. What we wanted to do as far as showing film this morning, we couldn’t do.

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“Like I said, you are going to have four or five of those games a year, you don’t want to see them but it’s going to happen. And when you are playing short-handed, guys get tired and guys are not the same players in five in seven (games) or four in six, or whatever it may be. … But I would never question our guys’ heart and effort on the season. I think a game or two we don’t look as good as we normally do but the guys have been playing, their effort is there every single night. It’s just sometimes we got to be a little bit more physical and that can come with some fatigue as well.”

In his second game back after missing five with a sprained right elbow, All-Star wing Paul George added 17 points, six assists and five steals to the victory – including going 3 for 7 from 3-point range, in the process moving past Chauncey Billups for sole possession of 18th place on the NBA’s all-time 3-point field goal list with his 1,831st career 3.

Tyrese Haliburton had his fourth consecutive double-double with 22 points and a career-high 13 assists for Sacramento. Former USC standout Chimezie Metu added 11 points and 10 rebounds.

The Clippers have a three-day break – their longest so far this season – before they host Denver and Brooklyn in consecutive games on Sunday and Monday at what will then be known as Crypto.com Arena.