The Sixers have now won five-straight and pulled this one off without Joel Embiid. A WILD night in the NBA and Canada/USA Women’s Hockey were a part of the Valentine’s Day action as well…

The Philadelphia 76ers defeated the Miami Heat 104-102 last night at the Wells Fargo Center. The Heat led 62-39 at halftime but a solid defensive effort along with some shots starting to fall brought the Sixers the victory. Marco Belinelli made his Sixers debut and quickly won over the crowd dropping 17 points.

Joel Embiid did not play citing a sore right ankle. He apparently warmed up before the game before receiving treatment and get ruled out. Early on, the Sixers looked like Embiid’s absence was heavily affecting the defensive effort. The Sixers were called for 3 technical fouls and seemingly everything was dropping for Miami in the first half while nothing would hit for the Sixers.

The third quarter opened with the Heat still pushing their lead but the Sixers pushed back HARD. A Ben Simmons triple-double and an absolute dominant rebound-game helped the Sixers hold Miami to 40 points in the second half against the Sixers’ 75. What’s the craziest part of the comeback is that it wasn’t that the Sixers started nailing threes from JJ Redick or Rober Covington–the team went 25.7% from behind the arc. The Sixers grinded out a lay-ups and mid-range jumpers to demoralize the Heat–things Joel Embiid normally provides for the team.

Once the Sixers tied up the game with about five minutes left, the game got pretty competitive with this shot being the difference maker:

The Sixers now enter the All-Star Break seeded 7th with Miami 1.5 games back in 8th and Detroit 1.5 back of Miami.

Quick jersey thought: the Heat wore their “city” unis last night and they’re SICK. Go back and check them out on the cover photo if you haven’t yet but they look like management pulled these straight of Miami Vice.

Other NBA Scores:

• Blazers edge Warriors 123-117—Damian Lillard and Kevin Durrant were putting on a scoring clinic dropping 44 and 50 points, respectively.
• Rockets beat Kings 100-91—The Rockets have moved past the Warriors for the top seed in the West. Golden State may be doing what the Cavs did last year in that “we don’t care what seed we are because we can kick it into high gear in the playoffs.” Regardless if GS is doing that or not, the Rockets are for real and James Harden is on the warpath to a title.
• Wizards drop Knicks 118-113—Checking early scores last night, all anyone could talk about was Tim Hardaway, Jr’s 37 first-half points. He finished with 37 and the Knicks blew a 24-point halftime lead.
• Jazz beat Suns 107-97—Elfrid Payton dropped a triple-double. There’s a Dario Saric hater out there who’s been saying the Sixers were idiots to trade Payton for Dario who’s probably celebrating this stat line.

Hockey Scores:

• Leafs beat Blue Jackets 6-3–Columbus certainly sits a point out of the playoffs while Toronto is safely in so this loss is much more about CBJ getting ice cold at the wrong time.
• Avs blank Habs 2-0—Seymon Varlamov stopped all 43 Montreal shots as Colorado holds on to their playoff hopes. COL trails the Wild by 2 points for the second wild card.
• Canada Women beat USA 2-1—The USA women’s Olympic struggles against our northern neighbors continued last night to wrap up group play. Crazily enough, the women’s medal round uses overall seeding, not group play rankings, so the USA gets a bye into the semis as the #2 seed to Canada’s #1. It’s almost as if the IOC wanted to put the top-two against each other twice for TV ratings–that sounds nothing like them. Shoutout to fellow Berkshire alum Kendall Coyne for scoring the USA’s only goal in the third period.

Golf – TIGER IS BACK

The Genesis Open kicked off Thursday morning from Rivera Country Club and Tiger Woods is making his second start in 2018. As I’m finishing this blog (lunchtime on the East Coast), Tiger is +1 through five holes. What makes me the most excited is that he’s playing with Justin Thomas and RORY. What a group. More updates to come as no groups have even hit the back nine yet.

NEW POD TONIGHT

Matty D and I will be back on the airwaves tonight talking hockey and hoops! Make sure to follow our social media for the links!

Apologies for the last couple Nightly Roundups posting around lunchtime on the following day. I’ve been catching up on sleep from all the Eagles celebrations and going away last weekend so I’ve needed to finish up the posts over lunch the next day. I appreciate your understanding.

(cover photo via)