Daily Archives: March 2, 2019

Basketball

Philadelphia 76ers v Golden State Warriors

United States of America

National Basketball Association

Saturday 2nd March 2019

Tip Off 20.30

Philadelphia 76ers 117 Golden State Warriors 120, attendance 20,624

76ers Starters :

Jonah Bolden : 12 pts, 3 reb, 2 ast, 2 blk

Tobias Harris : 20 pts, 9 reb, 3 ast

Ben Simmons : 25 pts, 15 reb, 11 ast, 3 stl

Jimmy Butler : 21 pts, 9 reb, 2 ast, 1 stl, 1 blk

J. J. Redick : 6 pts, 3 reb, 1 ast

Used bench :

Mike Scott, Jonathon Simmons, T. J. McConnell

Warriors Starters :

Draymond Green : 6 pts, 9 reb, 10 ast, 3 stl

Kevin Durant : 34 pts, 5 reb, 5 ast

Alfonzo McKinnie : 0 pts, 1 reb, 1 ast

DeMarcus Cousins : 25 pts, 8 reb, 2 stl, 1 blk

Stephen Curry : 28 pts, 4 reb, 2 ast, 4 stl

Used bench :

Jordan Bell, Jonas Jerebko, Quinn Cook, Shaun Livingston, Damion Lee, Andre Iguodala

@ Wells Fargo Center

3601 South Broad Street

Philadelphia

PA 19148

Admission $170 + $28 fees, Resale, Print at Home Ticket

No Programme.

The Wells Fargo Center was opened in 1996 and has a capacity of 20,478, but with additional standing tickets available in the executive boxes this can increase by another couple of hundred. It is also home to the NHL team Philadelphia Flyers. It is located at South Philadelphia Sports Complex, which is also home to the NFL and MLB stadiums of Philadelphia Eagles and Philadelphia Phillies respectively. The complex is at the end of the Broad Street Line on the underground, which is NRG Station. It costs $2.50 each way from central Philadelphia.

With the current NBA champions being the visitors, it meant that ticket prices were astronomical, but readily available through the resale outlets. Unfortunately, the main man for the 76ers, Joel Embiid, was missing his fifth consecutive match through injury, although this was offset by Klay Thompson being absent for the Warriors as he was nursing a knee injury picked up in the game with Orlando Magic on Thursday night.

This was in the balance right to the end as the lead changed hands fourteen times and eleven times it was all square. The 76ers had a chance to level it up with 1.7 seconds left on the clock, but lost possession and their chance of taking it to overtime was gone. Once again Durant and Curry led the scoring for the Warriors, with an impressive 25 points also scored by Cousins. Ben Simmons top scored for the 76ers with 25 points as part of a triple double.

The win leaves Golden State Warriors top of the Western Conference, although they are being pushed all the way by Denver Nuggets. Philadelphia remain fourth in the Eastern Conference.


Football

Philadelphia Union v Toronto F.C.

United States of America

Major League Soccer

Saturday 2nd March 2019

Kick Off 13.00 Actual 13.10

Philadelphia Union 1 Toronto F.C. 3, attendance 16,498

45’ + 3, 0-1

62’ 0-2

73’ 1-2 (pen)

90’ + 4, 1-3

@ Talen Energy Stadium

1, Stadium Drive

Chester

PA 19013

Admission $42 + $6.75 fees, Print at Home Ticket.

No Programme.

The Talen Energy Stadium (current sponsor name) was opened in 2010 and has an all seated capacity of 18,500. The stadium is in the town of Chester, some 14 miles south west of the centre of Philadelphia and is reached by taking the SEPTA (South Eastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority) train towards Wilmington, which takes around half an hour. It costs $5.25 each way and on matchdays the club run a free shuttle bus to and from the main station in Chester to the stadium.

It was a bit concerning to have arrived in Philadelphia on Friday afternoon to be greeted by 3 inches of freshly fallen snow, although unlike in England, everything was carrying on as normal and later that evening the club had tweeted pictures of the pitch having been cleared, so the game would be going ahead. Again, unlike at home, where the club would have just postponed the match and made no effort whatsoever in getting the game on.

This was the season opener for both clubs. In fact, it was actually the first match to get underway in the entire league. The standard in the MLS is improving, but most of the teams would probably struggle to survive in the Championship in England. The crowd, which looked far less than the announced figure, still have huge numbers who don’t appear to really understand what they are watching and certainly don’t get the basics of the offside rule and seem to think any tackle where their player falls over is a foul and a yellow card to the opposing teams player. They certainly didn’t get that the ball has to actually cross the goal line for it to count as a goal, which was evident when a shot was easily cleared. It didn’t help that VAR was in use for the match, which meant any close call took an age to decide on whether it was offside/handball/ a goal etc. etc.

Union had plenty of possession, but rarely threatened. Toronto did very little, but having had a penalty saved after 34 minutes, went ahead in stoppage time through American international Michael Bradley. The second half really opened up and Toronto went 0-2 up when Bradley added a second goal just after the hour mark. Union pulled a goal back from the penalty spot, but the visitors finally killed the game off with a third goal deep into stoppage time.

The match itself was certainly enjoyable and a decent watch as a neutral. What was a pain though, was the ten minutes late kicking off, not helped by having to go through two national anthems before we got underway. Added to five minutes stoppage time in each half and what felt like endless stoppages for VAR decisions and players rolling about pretending to be injured, then a match scheduled to kick off at 13.00 didn’t finish until 15.09 !

Thankfully, there wasn’t a train back in to Philadelphia until 15.54, so plenty of time for the shuttle bus to get back to the station and we could start thinking about the next sporting event, which was later that evening and was certainly the hottest ticket in town…………..