The Daily Huddle (12/23)

Welcome back to another Daily Huddle, a recap from the day in the world of sports!

Today was a big day. We had almost every NBA team that didn't play yesterday tip their season off tonight with the two exceptions that I'll discuss below. A couple headlines from the NFL and the world of soccer that I'll touch on and other than some college bowl games that I did not watch, I think that is it for today.

NFL

This story broke yesterday but I didn't mention it in the Huddle because I didn't think much of it at the time. Dwyane Haskins was seen in photos with some women from a local gentlemen's club and he was not wearing a mask, which I am hearing is against team COVID protocols. When I first heard it, like I said, I didn't really think much of it. Sort of a, "oh, he's an idiot," type moment and I continued scrolling through my Twitter. Then I heard some other people's takes and thought about it more. Not only is he an idiot, but he's a major idiot and pretty immature and selfish of him to put himself at risk, especially when Ron Rivera is your head coach. Rivera has been overcoming cancer treatments during this pandemic and still goes out there and coaches the Washington Football Team. For Haskins to go out and put Rivera at risk when he's supposed to be their starting quarterback and a young leader is crazy to me. How did he think he would not be caught and punished for this?

The punishment? A $40,000 fine and loss of his title of Captain for the season. I would also be willing to be that he will not get the start or the snaps he was anticipating in this week's game against the Panthers.

Bone-headed move from Haskins here. I believe this is his second time getting caught breaking protocol. I would not be surprised at all if he doesn't last much longer in this league just because he's a dumbass.

The other big story from the NFL is that JuJu Smith-Schuster has officially announced that he will NOT be dancing on opposing team's logos anymore after him and coach, Mike Tomlin, sat down to talk it out.

Thank God JuJu decided to stop doing this. This was best case scenario for him. If he were to keep dancing on the logo at midfield, he would just get lit up week after week, with maybe even a cheap shot or two sprinkled in there. On the flip side, if he just stopped dancing then he looks like a coward. Since Tomlin stepped in and spoke to him about it, at least JuJu looks like he's trying to be the bigger man and look out for his teammates. I think he was just afraid of getting killed on Sunday.

I think that is it for the NFL talks for today. Only other thing is Stephon Gilmore of the Patriots is on IR but that doesn't really matter because the Pats can't make the playoffs anyway, so I hope he gets healthy soon, but don't rush it.

Soccer

Nothing too important here because no EPL matches were played, but Manchester City and Manchester United will face each other in the Semi Final of the Carabao Cup after New Years. Again, not a huge deal, but I think it is always fun to have a rivalry match even though the fans are kind of what make it so special.

That's all I have for soccer today.

NB-YAY!

Today marked the start of the season for every team in the league except for the Rockets and the Thunder. Their game had to be postponed because there were COVID related issues on the Rocket's roster and those problems knocked them down below the eight active player minimum required to play a game. Coley Mick from Barstool Sports gave his take and was confused as to why the Rockets don't have to forfeit this game and give the Thunder a 1-0 record to start. I am 100% on his side. Houston should be held accountable for their actions and punished for their bad behavior. OKC has done everything right to get ready to play this game, and because their opponents are idiots and out of control, now they have to change their schedule of flights and practices and team meetings or whatever it may be to accommodate the team that couldn't get their stuff together.

There are claims that James Harden was out at a strip club, which is against team or league protocol I would assume. I heard through the grapevine that on Harden's Instagram, he said he was not there. The world may never know. Except the Rocket's front office had a video, with which they confirmed that Harden was there. Harden was fined $50,000 with no suspension or anything like that, but they do have to reschedule their season opener.

That's enough strip club talk for today's Huddle. Let's get to the most important bit of news from the NBA today in my eyes. The Boston Celtics are a very good basketball team. The Celts hosted the Bucks tonight and were 4.5 point underdogs when the lines closed. Boston, lead by Jaylen Brown's 33, points and Jayson Tatum's 30, beat the Bucks in regulation by one.

I have four major things I want to touch on from the Celtics - Bucks game.

#1. Khris Middleton always seems to be a bit of an issue for the Celtics for some odd reason, and he went for 27, 14 and 8 tonight, so he clearly likes playing in the TD Garden. According to a clutchpoints.com article from May of 2019, Khris Middleton shot the 3 ball better against the Celtics than any player has against any team ever at nearly 64%. I don't know how he does it and why it has to be against us, but he is always a problem for us.

#2. Based on tonight's performance, I am very happy with the Jeff Teague signing. He had 19 points in 25 minutes tonight. he was 4-4 from three point land and hit those threes in moments that mattered. I'm hoping he can keep it all up throughout the season, and I think when Kemba comes back the two of them will make a pretty fun and consistent backcourt.

#3. Marcus Smart needs to be in the conversation for defensive player of the year if he plays a majority of games like he did tonight. Yes, he was on first team all defense last season, and that's great, but DPOY always goes to some big center because they can block shots and guard other talented bigs. Marcus Smart is 6'3" and he can guard 1-5 on just about any team in the league. He ended up on Giannis a handful of times tonight and he drew three charges against him. He can guard guards, he can guard guys like Giannis in situations that we need him to and he is scrappy as all hell. I seriously think that if he continues to guard guys that are bigger than him the way I know he can, he has a shot at DPOY this year.

#4. This is just a recap of how silly the ending of this game was. First of all, we were up 17 points heading into the 4th quarter and we only won the game by one, single point. The Celtics seem to have a problem coming out strong in the fourth, and I think it's because we are not very deep. At least not as deep as the Bucks are. The Bucks are known for running 11 or so guys through the rotation in any given game, and that is hard to keep up with. We lost decent leads in the fourth last year, and nothing has changed this year.

Fast forward to the end of this game. The Celts have the ball with about 20 seconds left, and we are down 1. The Bucks foul with, I believe, 9 seconds left on the clock because they had one to give. Brad calls a timeout to talk it over, and I'm sitting there thinking we have to give the ball to Jaylen coming out of this timeout. Jaylen shot 54% from the field while Tatum was at around 41%. Jaylen had been hot late in the game and I thought he would be getting the ball. He didn't. Tatum ends up taking the team's final shot with 0.4 seconds left and banks in a 3 over Giannis to give us a 2 point lead with less than a second left to go.

So Tatum hits that and Budenholzer, obviously, calls a timeout and that moves that ball up to the Bucks offensive half of the court. I'm thinking to myself, as long as Middleton doesn't catch the inbound pass, we go to overtime at the worst. Tristan Thompson guards Giannis as he rolls towards the rim for a lob to tie the game at the buzzer. Apparently, Thompson fouls Giannis as the ball is in there air. Now, I watched that replay at least five times and, as unbiased as I can be, I did not see anything that warranted a foul. Because they called it a foul, and we didn't have one to give, Giannis is on the line for two and the game goes to OT if he hits both. He makes the first. He then BRICKS the second one because, according to some people, he STINKS, and the ball don't lie folks. Celtics win 122-121.

It was awesome to watch Celtics' basketball again, it was a great game against a great team and I expect both the Bucks and the Cs to be in the top 4 teams in the East this year.

Also from the NBA today:

• Westbrook had a triple double, 21, 11 and 15 in a losing effort against the 6ers.

• Terry Rozier had 42 points with TEN 3 pointers in a loss to the Cavs.

• Zion had a volleyball like swat on OG Anunoby as they beat the Raptors.

• Ja Morant played well based on a glance at the box score with 44 points and 9 assists, though they fell to the Spurs.

• Jokic had a triple double in and overtime loss to the Kings. He went for 29, 15 and 14.

Final Thoughts

I did not watch any college football today, because I don't really care too much about these smaller bowl games typically, maybe I'll watch some tomorrow though. Speaking of tomorrow, there is no NBA or NFL so I may not have a Daily Huddle for tomorrow. If I do it'll be college football and basketball oriented.

I do plan to have a Huddle on Christmas day so if not tomorrow, I'll see ya then.