Friday night’s Knicks-76ers game at the Wells Fargo Center epitomized what the relationship between New York and Philadelphia sports has become in the modern day. Doug Collins’ Sixers built a 14-point lead at the end of the first quarter, displaying a keener sense of urgency and cohesiveness within the team that the Knicks were sorely lacking through the first twelve minutes. The Knicks, more talented, and, at least on paper, better than their rivals down the New Jersey Turnpike, clawed back and even built a nine-point lead in the third quarter. Yet, when it mattered most, in the fourth quarter, Philadelphia executed good ball movement, took smart shots, and came up with clutch rebounds while the Knickerbockers displayed none of the above when the chips were down. The final buzzer sounded after Shawne Williams, who had just hit a 3-pointer to keep the Knicks alive moments before, passed up an almost identical shot, to take a higher percentage attempt closer to the hoop which failed. For me, a guy who has been living in North Jersey my whole life but went to college in South Jersey for four years, this was like a bad sequel to a movie I had already seen many times before. Simply put, the Philadelphia teams own the New York teams.

Yes, I know the Yankees defeated the Phillies in the World Series two seasons ago, but as a lifelong Met fan, this is like giving me the crust of your cherry pie. Don’t get me wrong, I was rooting somewhat for the hated Stankies, as conflicted as I was, but it was bittersweet knowing what has transpired between my baseball team and their National League East rivals over the past several years. Starting in 2007, the Mets, coming off a season in which they were 97-65 and had come within one game of reaching the World Series, blew a seven-game lead with seventeen games left to miss the playoffs while the Phillies doused each other in champagne to celebrate their division title. The following day, a Monday no less, I went to class and saw many of my classmates and friends, many of whom had never expressed any fondness for the Phillies or baseball, suddenly wearing red hats, shirts, jerseys with red pinstripes, and anticipated that which I knew the Mets would not be; a playoff game. The following year, the Mets blew a three-game lead with roughly twenty games to play, only to miss the playoffs once again while the Phillies went on to win the World Series. The past two seasons, the Mets have won less than 80 games each year while the Phils have reached another World Series  and an NLCS.

After winning Super Bowl XLII and the first meeting with the Eagles of 2008, the Giants lost their second regular season meeting at home against the Eagles a little over a week after star wide receiver Plaxico Burress accidentally shot himself in the leg, leading to Burress’ incarceration and effective end of his tenure as a Giant. About five weeks later, in Giants Stadium, a game which I attended, the NFC’s top-seeded Giants hosted the wild card Eagles and on a bitterly cold, windy day at the Meadowlands, lost an incredibly ugly contest that sent the Eagles to Arizona for the NFC Championship Game the following week; the site of the Giants’ Super Bowl victory the previous year as well as the site of a Giants’ victory over those same Cardinals just months prior. As a cherry on top of the disappointment, the Super Bowl played between Arizona and the Steelers, consisted of two teams whom the Giants beat in their respective buildings earlier in the season. The following year, the Eagles swept the Giants as the Birds reached the playoffs as a Wild Card team while the Giants wasted a 5-0 start to close out the season with an 8-8 record. This 2010 NFL season that will officially come to close Sunday saw the Eagles defeat the Giants in a close Sunday night game in which New York committed five turnovers and countless penalties. Of course, anyone in the sporting world who doesn’t live under a rock has seen about a few hundred clips of what transpired about a month later; DeSean Jackson showboating his way into the end zone following a line drive punt from Matt Dodge on the last play of regulation that turned a 31-10 Giants’ lead with eight minutes left into a 38-31 Eagles win. The ultimate result was another Eagle sweep of the Giants as the two NFC East rivals each finished with a 10-6 record, but the Eagles’ 10-6 mark carried an NFC East title while the Giants watched the playoffs from their couches, beacuse of how the two head-to-head matchups turned out.

On the final day of the 2009-10 NHL regular season, the Rangers and Flyers came down to a win-and-in showdown at the very site as Friday night’s Knicks-76ers game. The matchup went to a shootout, which culminated with goaltender Brian Boucher denying Olli Jokinen, to lock up the seventh seed in the Eastern Conference for Philly, which less than two months later would lead to a berth in the Stanley Cup Finals, while the Rangers landed where? That’s right, their couches (notice the pattern here?). This season, the Flyers hold a commanding spot atop the Eastern Conference, while the Rangers, with a recent string of poor performances and having been surpassed in the standings by the surging Montreal Canadiens, have fallen from sixth to seventh seed, trailing their rivals by eleven points despite having played two more games. The Blueshirts have also lost all three of their head-to-head matchups with the Broad Street Bullies this year.

It’s been a tough era in New York sports for any non-Yankee fan and if any fan from the area has goals shallow of seeing your team win a 27th world championship, the teams from eastern Pennsylvania must be defeated. Sunday afternoon includes a pre-Super Bowl matinee rematch with the Knicks and Sixers in the Garden. Let’s start there.