All Things Considered, What a Freakin’ Weekend

There was a Saturday last Spring where all three teams, the Phillies, Flyers and Sixers all played at home. It was a lunar eclipse of Philly sports…and no one cared. Every team sucked and there were no playoff implications. It was just an incredible excuse to get drunk in a South Philly parking lot. Fast forward to this year and this weekend felt so similar to that one with one glaring difference….WE WERE WINNING.




Let’s start with the Phillies, because if you’re a millennial and have an attention span like mine, you’re probably not going to make it to the end of this article. And while I have you, it’s important to give the Phillies the credit they deserve. I’ll let Jayson Stark take it away on the run the Phillies have been on:

Now, I get it, the Rays won’t be saving us from Yankees/Red Sox Sunday Night Baseball every week and the Reds are literally, somehow worse than the Marlins. But, regardless of sport, one stupid saying can hold true: good teams beat bad teams. The Eagles this year would play the Chicago Bears, handle their business, do the electric slide and go home. The Sixers took off on this winning streak much in large part by beating teams with lesser records. Those two teams positioned themselves well by not slipping up against inferior opponents. The Phillies, 8-1 in their last nine games, are doing the same thing early on. I’m still not entirely sold on Gabe Kapler using 80 relievers by the 7th inning but what I am sold on is Scott Kingery being the new Utley, Jake Arreita being a workhouse 1A ace to Aaron Nola, and I’m even sold on Vinny Velasquez gaining some semblance of control this year. Maybe it’s because they have generated success early in the season or maybe it’s just simply I have a Philly sports high since the Super Bowl, but it feels good to be excited about the Phillies again.




The Flyers get the shortest excerpt in this post because they ruined my “Everything is perfect in Philadelphia, you should all be jealous of us” article. Even so, Friday night was a HUGE bounce back win on the road to even the series up. We were ready to write them off completely after losing by a touchdown two nights prior and that was one hell of a response. Sunday was a stinker but our crowd was next level as Philly solidifies themselves as the capital of sports fandom. In the face of adversity, they’ve delivered before, no reason to think that changes in Game 4. Also in this PC generation, it’s good to see us Philadelphians haven’t gotten soft too:

https://twitter.com/MSullivanJr/status/985589070238834688




THE SIXERS. THE GOD DAMN PHILADELPHIA 76ERS. My Process babies are all grown up. Saturday night in primetime and they hang 130 in the first home playoff game since 2012. It was like watching your son walk the stage and graduate while you think, “you have been a fuck up in the past, but I’m so proud of you now”. Imagine thinking the fans would never come back. Imagine thinking Brandon Ingram was the pick over Ben Simmons. Imagine writing Markelle Fultz off as a bust already. Saturday night vindicated the entirety of The Process. It was everything we had ever hoped and yearned for. In the first half, I thought the physicality of the Heat and the refs slowing the game down were really bothering the Sixers. The absence of Embiid was evident. I was worried the game was going to be a slow grind to the finish and that doesn’t favor Brett Brown’s squad. And then…the floodgates open and we get the perfect ending to the Process Playoff debut. JJ was on fire, Covington comes back from foul trouble to just harass the Heat guards, and the Rookie of the Year finished a rebound shy of a triple double in his first playoff game. It was all so perfect, but nothing was more perfect than this:






Who knows where we go from here. Both playoff series are still up in the air and the Phillies are less than a month into the season. But, for one memorable weekend, almost everything was perfect. Our crowds were deafening, our teams were thriving, and of Eagles are still Super Bowl champions.

By Aidan Powers | April 16, 2018