The Daily Huddle (1/4)

Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Huddle! This one will be pretty quick today since all there is to cover is a little bit of NBA. Soon enough we will have the NHL back up and running and I'll cover some of those games too, but for now just basketball during the week.

Without further ado, let's get in to it!

NBA

In the game that I actually care about between the Raptors and the Celtics, the C's won it by 12 with a 126-114 final. I tuned in to this one for most of the second half and watch our bench players stick it up and almost give it back to Toronto. Boston had a huge middle of the game, scoring 38 in the second and 39 in the third, but the fourth quarter was just ugly. The lineup for a lot of the fourth quarter was Grant Williams, Tremont Waters, Payton Pritchard, Robert Williams and Semi Ojeleye. Normally, I would be pretty okay with this five except for maybe Waters. Now, Kemba, Smart and Teague all sat out of this game, so I see why Tremont got as many minutes as he did. Tonight though, those five were bad down the stretch. And I mean bad. There were probably four or five possessions in a row where Toronto would score, they'd play full court pressure, we'd get the ball barely over half court and then turn it over. In fact, it was so bad that Brad had to pull the bench players to get the Jays back out on the floor with only four-ish minutes left in the game. The Raptors went from being down 25 or so to being within 10. Luckily, Jayson Tatum had 40 points for himself tonight and Jaylen added his own 19. I took the over on Jaylen's point total of 23.5 so I was really hoping he'd get a couple of buckets in garbage time, but he went scoreless in the fourth quarter.

Payton Pritchard made a little bit of noise for himself today with an awesome stat line finishing the game with 23 points, 2 rebounds and 8 assists. I think I officially love him and I hope he can stick around Boston for a long time. He's a lot of fun to watch and he gets the job done.

Overall, with the exception of the bad stretch from our bench, this was a good win without two of our guards who usually play a lot of minutes.

Other notable stat lines and stories from the NBA today:

• Julius Randle almost had himself a nice triple-double, finishing with 28, 17 and 9 in a win over the Hawks. On the other side of that game, Trae Young had a wild 14 assists to go along with his 31 points.

• Luka had a triple-double with 33, 16 and 11 as the Mavs beat the Rockets by 13.

• Giannis was the high scorer of the night (unless someone in the Warriors v Kings game has a big second half) with 43 points in a 10 point victory over Detroit.

NFL

A bunch of coaches and GMs have been fired within the past couple of days. I don't really get too in to the coaching carousel as some call it, so I'll put Schefter's tweets that have the important information below for those who care.

There were reports that Cam Newton and the Pats have already agreed to part ways, from what I heard Schefter say, that is MOST LIKELY happening but not confirmed yet. I would like to have someone other than Cam Newton starting at QB in New England next year. I don't think that should come as a surprise to anyone. In a perfect world, we can sign one of these guys who will be a free agent or trade for someone. I just want to know that they have played good football within the last year and I'll probably be happy with it. I'm sort of looking forward to watching the NFL playoffs with out the pressure on me. Normally if the Pats don't at least make the AFC title game the season is a failure, but now I just get to sit back and enjoy watching playoff football.

Final Thoughts

I don't think I have many final thoughts for you today. Since there is just NBA and prep for NFL playoffs going on right now I don't have much to cover. Hopefully something exciting comes out of the five NBA games tomorrow so I have good blog material.

Until next time, I'll see ya tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Huddle!