The Daily Huddle (12/25)

Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Huddle! A daily recap of the world of sports.

I missed you guys yesterday and I'm glad to be back on this wonderful Christmas Day to talk about some sports and whatnot. There is some NFL stuff to take care of and then plenty of NBA games to cover and then I will send you on your way for the night.

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

NFL

The Saints hosted the Vikings for the first Friday NFL game since 2009 today. The Saints had an easy time with this one beating Minnesota 52-33 in regulation. This gives the Saints the NFC South Division Title for the fourth year in a row and they still have a shot at the one seed in the NFC, kind of. The Packers would have to lose their next two and the Saints would have to beat the Panthers next week (which would not be a problem). Right now, it is looking like the Pack will hold on to that one seed as they play the Bears next week and only have to win one of these two to keep the top spot.

More importantly though, Alvin Kamara had an unbelievable Christmas Day for himself and the New Orleans Saints. The dude went off. He carried the ball 22 times for 155 yards and 6, yes I said 6, rushing touchdowns. This ties a record for most single game rushing TDs that was set back in the 1920s or 30s I believe. The only other touchdown the Saints had was on the ground from Taysom Hill. I'm sure that Alvin Kamara was solely responsible for a lot of people winning or losing their fantasy matchups this week, which is likely Championship league for most of you. On the other side of the ball, Kirk Cousins threw 3 touchdowns, one the Adam Thielen and two to Irv Smith Jr. and Dalvin Cook had one on the ground for himself. Obviously those four do not out weigh the SIX that Kamara had, which makes this an easy win, and cover, for the Saints.

We get three NFL games on Saturday, tomorrow, which is always fun. I doubt anyone will come close to Kamara's 55 fantasy points this week, but you never know!

NBA

NBA on Christmas Day is always fun for me, as I love to watch basketball and the jerseys always look cool and all the superstars get to play and it is just great. I'll go in order here and hit the highlights like top scorer or triple doubles or anything else notable.

We will start with the early game, the Pelicans and the Heat. The Heat get their first win as they hand the Pels their first loss with a final score of 11-98. Zion did his typical Zion stuff with 32 points (the game's leading scorer) and 14 boards. Off the top of my head, I don't remember seeing too many crazy awesome plays so we'll move on to the next game.

The Warriors and the Bucks faced off today and the Bucks grab their first win of the year after losing to the Boston Celtics on Wednesday :). The Bucks are just flat out a lot better than the Warriors are. Giannis is pretty good and Middleton is pretty good and Holiday is good and the list goes on. Middleton lead the game with 31 points while rookie James Wiseman for Golden State had a promising 18 points, 8 boards and 3 blocks. Again, off the top, no notable highlight reel plays that I feel like discussing, however, I will say that the jerseys in this game really messed with me. The Bucks, whose colors are typically green, white, maybe a cream color wore bright blue jerseys today. While the Warriors, the away team who have blue in their primary logo, wore white. I constantly was losing track of which team was which because I have NEVER seen the Bucks in blue jerseys yet I know the Warriors are gold and blue. I think the jerseys the Bucks wore were pretty sick, they just confused me over and over.

Like, when you really look at them their kind of fire, but my little dinosaur brain couldn't comprehend it.

Next up we have the Nets and the Celtics. The Celtics, lead by Jaylen Brown and his 27 points, failed to keep it tight down the stretch as they fell to the Nets with a final score of 123-95. This game was frustrating for me. Boston had a lead at the end of the first half. Now, it wasn't a huge lead, but we had the lead. Then we get outscored by 12 in the third quarter and it was over. The Nets won the fourth quarter 37-18. That is very bad. Now, Kyrie and KD had great games, as we would expect, and I can't take anything away from either of them. They can essentially score at will against some teams. It was just really tough to watch the lead slip away in the third. Kyrie lead the Nets and the game with 37 points followed by KD's 29. My biggest takeaway from this game was that the Celtics' bench is just not that good. I do think we had to play two of the deepest teams in the NBA to start the season, so that's a tough way to get our bench guys going, but Jaylen and Jayson both had 20+ and we still couldn't get it done, partly because of our bench combined with the fact that Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving are both on the Nets. We play the Pacers on Sunday, I think we can win that game, we will see.

The primetime game on Christmas Day was in Los Angeles and it was the Dallas Mavericks against the LA Lakers. The Lakers took this one home with a win over the Mavs 138-115. I didn't watch too much of this game if I'm being honest, I watched a good chunk of the second half, but was only kind of paying attention. Anthony David is really good at basketball, so is Lebron and Luka. AD lead all scorers with 28 tonight but was closely followed by Luka's 27. I really can't wait to see what the Mavs can do with Kristaps healthy and back in the lineup. I think that will take a lot of pressure off of Luka and allow them to open things up offensively as well as have a rim protector on the defensive end.

The final game of the night is the Clippers and the Nuggets. As I write this, we are part way through the second quarter and it is 52-39 Clippers. Since I'm on the East coast, I don't feel like staying up to watch this and write about it after, so I'll tie up loose ends in tomorrow's Daily Huddle. I'll tell you this though, I am on the Clippers -3.5 tonight. So far so good, but crazier things have been done. At the moment, it looks like Jokic may have himself a triple double tonight, he is sitting at 10, 4 and 4 right now. Go Clippers!

Final Thoughts

That is all I have for today, tomorrow's Huddle will likely be LOADED as there is NFL, NBA, EPL and some college games as well. So, make sure you check in tomorrow night or Sunday morning to get a look at Saturday's Huddle.

Until next time, folks! Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!