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- [00:01]
eBay Commercial Announcer
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- [00:32]
Jeff Bridges
Morning Zoe Got donuts.
- [00:34]
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- [00:37]
Jeff Bridges
Well, I dig the mattress and I want to be in a T mobile commercial like you.
- [00:42]
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- [00:55]
Jeff Bridges
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- [01:03]
LinkedIn Jobs Narrator
Nice.
- [01:03]
T-Mobile Commercial Voice
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- [01:05]
Jeff Bridges
T Mobile is the best place to.
- [01:06]
Dave DeFore
Get the new iPhone 17 Pro on.
- [01:09]
Jeff Bridges
Us with eligible traded in any condition. So what are we having for lunch?
- [01:13]
T-Mobile Commercial Voice
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- [01:15]
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- [01:34]
Dan Woike
As.
- [01:34]
LinkedIn Jobs Narrator
A small business owner, you don't have the luxury of clocking out early. Your business is on your mind 24, 7. So when you're hiring you need a partner that works just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is Linked in jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network and get qualified candidates that can manage all in one place.
- [01:59]
Andrew Scheck
I've been in a position where I.
- [02:00]
LinkedIn Jobs Narrator
Need to hire many times and I never had the luxury of having LinkedIn jobs help me. As a user of LinkedIn jobs now, I find it incredibly easy to find the most qualified candidates. Here's how LinkedIn jobs works. Number one post your job. LinkedIn's new feature can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people. With deep candidate insights. You can post your job for Free. Or you can pay to promote promoted jobs. Get three times more qualified applicants. Number two, get qualified candidates. And at the end of the day, the most important thing to your small business is the quality of candidates. And with LinkedIn you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72% of small businesses using LinkedIn say that LinkedIn helps them find high quality candidates. And finally share it with your network. You can let your network know that you're hiring. You can even add the hashtag hiringframe to your personal profile and and get two times more qualified candidates. Find out why more than two and a half million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com Athletic MBA that's LinkedIn.com Athletic MBA to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.
- [03:24]
Dave DeFore
Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily, presented by eBay. I'm Dave DeFore here with Xena Keda. And Shea scored 35. The Thunder win. Draymond gets attack. We're right back. The NBA's back. Opening night. Xena, what do you grade the NBA on NBC opening night broadcast.
- [03:42]
Xena Keda
A plus, baby.
- [03:48]
Dave DeFore
It was ring night for the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder in Oklahoma City and in Oklahoma City in the Paycom Center. Our own Andrew Schleck joins us. Andrew, what a game. How about that for opening night? This team, seven game series in the Western Conference finals. Seven game series in the finals. And on opening night, free basketball. Double free basketball, double overtime. What a game.
- [04:17]
Andrew Scheck
Double OT on a school night, my man. It was, it was a, it was a lot of fun. This game had everything it had. You had ring night. You had the first banner being raised in okc. You had Kevin Durant being in town and being booed on like almost every possession that he had the ball, which I thought was maybe a bit much. I was okay with them booing him at the beginning, but it was a bit much to boom at every single possession.
- [04:42]
Dave DeFore
They were feeling themselves.
- [04:44]
Andrew Scheck
Yeah.
- [04:44]
Xena Keda
Then you had did he booed them back.
- [04:48]
Andrew Scheck
But then you had great physical basketball. Like you got to see Amin Thompson break out before he had cramps and had to leave. You got to see Chet's like a little bit more versatile offensive game that he's developing right now. And then you got to see the MVP deliver in the end. This game had everything. It was unbelievable and a great way to start for NBC and for the NBA on opening night.
- [05:15]
Xena Keda
That's where I want to start, Andrew. Like we at Home got the gift of NBA being back on NBC and the fanfare around it. But you obviously were there in person, getting to experience ring night banner being raised in okc. What was the vibe like for you in the arena, seeing the ring in person? I think the ring inside the ring, like, break it all down.
- [05:38]
Andrew Scheck
Yeah. I got to see the ring just a few minutes ago out at center court.
- [05:42]
Xena Keda
And.
- [05:43]
Andrew Scheck
And it's ridiculous. It's extremely. I will never own anything like that in my life. But there is a ring inside the ring that you can wear like an everyday ring.
- [05:54]
Xena Keda
Wow.
- [05:55]
Dan Woike
It's the walking ring.
- [05:56]
Dave DeFore
Functional, right?
- [05:57]
Andrew Scheck
The functional. I love some functionality here, and it's great. There's a bunch of stuff that is a callback to the Bombing Memorial on one side of it. There's a lot of thought and intentionality with the whole thing. It's very cool. All the guys clearly loved it. It was cool to see them raise the banner here at, you know, near the center court and get to see the guys celebrate. But then it was time to lock in, and the Houston Rockets were ready. If anybody was questioning it. Houston Rockets were ready.
- [06:33]
Dave DeFore
Let's jump into that. This was not some sort of an easy game for the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Rockets, like you mentioned, it was super physical, and it was physical from the jump. The Rockets, I thought, really bothered the Thunder. Obviously, the double big thing worked great for the Rockets. They were getting a ton of rebounds. I mean, Stephen Adams was. Yeah, that's true. Triple good, to be fair. But they were getting a lot of offensive rebounds, just a lot of tip outs. But when they went into the zone, that was when you saw Oklahoma City's lack of shooting, like, really bother them. And they were able to overcome it last year. They overcame it in this game. But it. It can't feel great to watch them shoot the ball like this, you know, an opening night.
- [07:17]
Andrew Scheck
Yeah. I mean, 13 of 52 from 3. They. They shot them. They. They took the threes. They were open threes.
- [07:26]
Xena Keda
They.
- [07:26]
Andrew Scheck
They found them. But you had, like, lou dort going 0 of 8, which can happen. You had Shea go 1 of 9. You had Hartenstein airmail a basketball over the rim. Caruso struggled. J. Will, who's a much improved shooter, really struggled in this one. And some of it, you certainly have to, like, tip your cap to the Rockets and their pesky defense, but a lot of it was like they just didn't make shots. I think there's a lot. They got a lot of quality looks, Shai, in the first half, I think Shai was trying to help his teammates get going. And you just didn't see a lot of Shay. Whenever the Rockets threw, put two on the ball. He was like going to put two on the ball, fine, let me find my open teammate. And that really worked for the Rockets. That's why the Rockets, I think they dictated a vast majority of this game.
- [08:20]
Dave DeFore
The way that they guarded Shay. The double big worked for them because Shea couldn't really split the pick and roll. So because they had another big end drop. So I mean, this was actually where their defense, I mean it, it's better for your defense if you have two bigs regardless. It's just if you, you know, if you get stuck trying to switch, you're. You're in, in hot water. But when you have a team that can't really shoot and doesn't have a whole lot of ball handlers and I think J. Dubs absence, Jalen Williams absence was the shadow cast over the Oklahoma City Thunder this entire game. Where you didn't have that other head of the snake out there that shake a kick to. In those doubles to get into that extra, you know, that second side pick and roll that they were missing.
- [09:05]
Xena Keda
I don't know, guys. I feel like I'm opposite you guys right now.
- [09:08]
Andrew Scheck
Okay, let's hear it, Xena. Let's hear it.
- [09:09]
Xena Keda
I really, no, I really do think that yes, the double big lineup worked for the Houston Rockets to a degree. I think it made them slower. It definitely made them obviously clunkier on offense. But I honestly think what you just said, Andrew, about the fact that one team was making shots and, and another team wasn't. Like you looked at OKC's defense against the Houston Rockets, number one, they were playing small ball, significantly smaller than the seam. I mean, hell, most teams are going to end up playing small ball when your average is 610. But they were fighting through screens, sticking to the hips of Houston Rockets players and blowing up their screen actions. But what was happening? What was the difference? KD was hitting tough shots. Ahmed was finishing in traffic like they were. They were just having to make tough shots. The complete opposite side. I kept seeing the Houston Rockets to go with one. I saw multiple opportunities in which it was forced turnovers from Isaiah Hartenstein trying to put a pass through defense or you know, trying to force offense versus I thinking me thinking that they were, you know, the Houston Rockets were being particularly pest pesky. I looked at Jay Will particularly. I'm like he had like four open threes, open threes that just he Didn't. He didn't hit. So I think this game really came down to, like, yes. Shout out to Houston, just being big. And I do think towards the end of the game, the top line of that zone defense was tough for. For them to. To get through. But I. I give credit to the fact that OKC feel good in the fact that this came down to not having your shots fall. And the main reason I also think this is. Look at Shay Gildas Alexander. Three points in the first quarter, two points in the second quarter. And when he decided not to be the person that's setting up his teammates, making that extra pass, what happened? He blows up in the second half. So that defense was, like. I don't know. I'm not going to say smoke and mirrors, but I don't think it was as pesky as we're saying it was.
- [11:07]
Andrew Scheck
Yeah, I would love to see the, like, grenade percentage from the Rockets in this one. It felt like they just had a lot of luck. Yes, There was a couple where, like, Durant got the ball where it just, like, the ball just, like, spit out and, like, just randomly went a place, and it ended up in Durant's hands in stride, like, with, like, that midi jumper. That's like a layup for him. You know, that happened a few times. And the Thunder, it felt like every one of those that, like, hit Dort's hands or it hit, you know, J. Will's hands or whatever, and it was, like, not bad. Like, I think it was within rhythm, but it. They just all clanked. So I do think, like, that. That certainly is part of the story. You guys want to talk about the controversy? The controversy?
- [11:53]
Xena Keda
Okay, so let me get a timeout. Oh, sorry. I was just clapping.
- [11:56]
Dave DeFore
They kind of blew past this. I thought. I really wish they would have spent a little bit more time on this with the broadcast, but. So at the end of the first overtime, Kevin Durant clearly calls for timeout, a timeout that the Rockets didn't have. But I. You know, the referees didn't see it, Andrew and I, and I think that that has to matter.
- [12:19]
Andrew Scheck
Yeah, Shay. So we asked Shay about it after the game, and he said he obviously called timeout three times, both verbally and physically called timeout three times, and they just didn't see it. He's like, you know, like, everybody makes mistakes. Like, Shay does this where he'll, like, acknowledge these, like, big mistakes that the officials make, and then he'll go. Then he'll go straight into. But I make mistakes, and we're all humans make mistakes thing, but the Jimmy.
- [12:52]
Dave DeFore
Butler playbook, man, this is why he gets all those foul calls.
- [12:55]
Andrew Scheck
You know, wins erase so many things, and I think the Thunder win will erase this one from the history books. Like, I don't think this is something that we're going to be talking about past tonight. Like, I really don't. But if. If the Thunder had lost this game and like, let's say, like, Shay gets a shot off over KD and it misses and Thunder lose, then we would have led with it. So I do think that. That it is something to acknowledge on opening night, but I also think it's. It's something that will be erased from the history books because of the win.
- [13:30]
Dave DeFore
I mean, yeah, it's a good win, but it was a great game. I mean, this was a great game as far as. Look, and we do this. This is night one of year two of the show. Right. But we've been doing this a long time, and you get into these regular season games, you're always rooting against overtime. But in this game, down the stretch, I was rooting for overtime because you could feel like every single time that the Thunder had something going, the Rockets would shut it down, and it was just like, oh, if they break through, we're gonna get OT here. Because it felt like the Rockets were making enough shots. And then it comes down to a couple of things. KD misses a late free throw in the fourth quarter. We get, you know, a couple of missed free throws in overtime by the Rockets. And then obviously the miss, the. The. The referees missing the free throw call, but it. It wound up being a great game. I want to talk about Chad a little bit. He started out the game 7 for 7. Hit. Hit a shot that, that got called back. So really eight for eight. But, I mean, his shot looks much quicker. He looks physically much better. And this is part of the reason why I've been calling on the Thunder, like, I think that they can win 70 games this season is because, you know, he just didn't play all that much last year. And by the time he started looking, you know, about like himself, we were in the finals. And now, you know, he's coming into the season. He looks great.
- [14:51]
Andrew Scheck
Yeah. I think that they kind of found one of the ways that they figured out the zone, specifically against this rocket scene was just like flashing Chet to the middle.
- [15:01]
Dave DeFore
Yep.
- [15:02]
Andrew Scheck
And then he could either, like, he can give you a floater, he can give you a turnaround, he can drive to the hole. Like, he can do so many things with the basketball at his size, that I do think, like, that's like, one of their weapons that they didn't quite have in the playoffs when it came to, like, trying to crack a zone. And so I thought, like, his mobility, too, just looks so much better tonight. I think that he is poised for a really, really big season. He had 28 tonight. They. They needed those 28 points from him with certainly without J Dub in there and then with everybody shooting the way they did. But, yeah, I. I think that this is, like, the trajectory for Chad. This is what we've kind of thought of him as since he was in high school. You know, he's the number two overall pick. He's a guy that is supposed to carry an offense. And because he's on the same team with Shea and with J Dub, like, I think a lot of people kind of think of him as, like, this third guy, but if this guy was in Washington or if this guy was in Charlotte or somewhere else, he would be the number one scorer on these other teams. Like, I think that he's a guy that can carry an offense, but he gets the luxury of these great teammates and then trying to figure out how to fit in. But I do think, like, we're going to see this version of Chet a lot this season, and it will help take the Thunder to another level.
- [16:26]
Xena Keda
I still vividly remember how Chet was being described going into that summer league that he was playing in when he hurt his foot. And everyone saying, this is Wemby's equal, right? Like, yes, we've seen Wemby. We've seen the highlights of this guy that can yo, yo the ball offensively and get past defenders. And there's another guy named Chet Holmgren who's also capable of doing the same thing. And last year, because of, you know, he only played 32 games last year total. Like, that's pretty crazy to think about that. Because of us only seeing him in the. In the playoffs, particularly in that defensive mode. We were like, oh, defensive player. And I just love how loud he was tonight, opening up the season and reminding us, no, no, no, no, no. I am absolutely a bucket. And even when my team doesn't, is. Isn't capable of finding their shot, I'mma get going. He even said that during the halftime talk with Maria Taylor and crew. You know, they took a little time to get going. Not me, though, right? I was going early. And I just loved what you're talking about, too, Andrew, about the mobility, because it's not only just Chet's ability To move with the ball in his hands. It's that off ball movement we didn't see a ton of last year. And we know that that is so crucial to what OKC does. I mean, okc, I was asking myself as the game started, did they get faster? Is that possible? But. But it's because we're also now seeing Chet be involved in that off ball movement and it just speeds them up.
- [17:58]
Andrew Scheck
Yeah, I think some of that's chemistry. Some of that is like. I think these all these guys had really good summers and some of it is too. Like they played a really slow Rockets team. Like that is one of like the slower moving teams in the league.
- [18:10]
Xena Keda
So fast in comparison.
- [18:13]
Andrew Scheck
Yeah. And I think we, before I go, we need to highlight Alper and Shangun because that guy was an absolute nine monster points.
- [18:23]
Xena Keda
Yeah.
- [18:24]
Andrew Scheck
39, 11 and 7. Two steals on a block yet 11 or 10 of 11 from the free throw line, 5 of 8 from 3. Which if that is like anywhere close to what he can do, not that he's gonna hit five of eight every night, but if he'll take eight threes a night, just take them like that's a huge deal for Houston.
- [18:43]
Dave DeFore
Well, he has to because they just don't have the shooting. So he's going to have.
- [18:48]
Xena Keda
Al was a 24% three point shooter last year. Like that's, that's the difference maker here. And you're right, Dave, he's being forced into that role because they don't have outside shooting.
- [18:57]
Dan Woike
Yeah.
- [18:58]
Dave DeFore
But before we go, Andrew, they're 1 and 0. Care to predict the first 82 and oh season in NBA history right here on the show.
- [19:06]
Andrew Scheck
Listen, we only have evidence of one thing happening and that's winning.
- [19:09]
LinkedIn Jobs Narrator
Okay?
- [19:10]
Dave DeFore
That's right. That's right, Andrew Slack guys go and listen to down to dunk if you like. The Thunder also catch Andrew on the Saturday slamming jam. And we've got the morning shoot around coming up on Wednesday mornings all season long on our YouTube channel. Guys, stick around after the break. We have Dan Woicke to talk about Lakers warriors and skinny Luca.
- [19:37]
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- [20:35]
LinkedIn Jobs Narrator
As a small business owner, you don't have the luxury of clocking out early. Your business is on your mind 24 7. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that works just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network, and get qualified candidates that can manage all in one place.
- [21:00]
Andrew Scheck
I've been in a position where I.
- [21:01]
LinkedIn Jobs Narrator
Need to hire many times and I never had the luxury of having LinkedIn jobs help me as a user of LinkedIn jobs. Now I find it incredibly easy to find the most qualified candidates. Here's how LinkedIn Jobs works. Number one, post your job. LinkedIn's new feature can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people. With deep candidate insights. You can post your job for free or you can pay to promote promoted jobs. Get three times more qualified applicants. Number two get qualified candidates. And at the end of the day, the most important thing to your small business is the quality of candidates. And with LinkedIn you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72% of small businesses using LinkedIn say that LinkedIn helps them find high quality candidates. And finally, share it with your network. You can let your network know that you're hiring. You can even add the hashtag hiring frame to your personal profile and get two times more qualified candidates. Find out why more than two and a half million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com Athletic MBA that's LinkedIn.com AthleticMBA to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.
- [22:18]
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- [23:43]
Dave DeFore
Opening night in crypto.com arena still miss Staples and it was disappointing for the Lakers in spite of luka doncic dropping 43 points in game one. There somewhere in the bowels of the arena. He was on a service cart, now he's in the referee's locker room. He's a man of mystery. He covers the Lakers for us. He's Dan Woi. Dan. I don't know. The Lakers, they didn't look great outside of Luca and I'd say Austin Reeves.
- [24:14]
Dan Woike
No. Yeah, I think that's, that was the problem tonight. They didn't look great outside of, you know, Luka and Austin Reeves. It was a, it was a slog of a game. I think in a lot of ways it's not surprising considering the product we saw during the preseason. What might have been a little surprising or I guess maybe a better way to put it, Dave, is the product we didn't see in the preseason. We saw this team play 3/4 together in the preseason in reality, right? Like Luka and Austin played together twice and one of those games they sat down all of their other starters basically because they had to play a back to back. Had to. They chose. Had to play a back to back. The night after they played a dress rehearsal final game against the Sacramento Kings looked okay, ish and played better. And then the second half but then, you know, shut it down, didn't win in the fourth quarter. And like to me, like this was a team tonight outside of like the individual skill of their Two best individual offensive players was a team that kind of looked like strangers out there, which against a team, by the way, that looks like they know like the names of everybody's pets and stuff.
- [25:32]
LinkedIn Jobs Narrator
Right?
- [25:33]
Dave DeFore
Like the Warriors, San Diego. Right. I mean, these guys know each other.
- [25:37]
Dan Woike
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, like Jimmy is like the X factor and all this.
- [25:41]
LinkedIn Jobs Narrator
Right?
- [25:41]
Dan Woike
And Horford. But like, these are like. I mean, these are plug and play. I mean, like, look, Jimmy has his own issues and stuff like that. In terms of like, you know, the personality sometimes can be not for everybody, but on the court. Like we're talking about guys that you could drop in any basketball situation and you know, Al Horford, like, people that would just like, it would make sense. That's not the case with this version of the Lakers team right now. Like, they are going to have to know what to do with deodorant. DeAndre is going to have to know what to do with Luka Dodges and Austin Reaves a bunch of times today. Like. Like that particular pairing was not on the same page, I think. Right. Like, Gabe Vincent played his first shift, didn't get a shot. Rui Hachimura played like a pretty long shift and didn't get a shot. I think at one point, guys, they had force like 17 turnovers and had two fast break points.
- [26:36]
Dave DeFore
Slow.
- [26:37]
Dan Woike
Which like a lot of those were dead ball tournaments. But yeah, they were slow. They were slow. They did. They didn't get the throwhead passes that they normally would get. It's both a indictment and I say this like in glowing sort of amazement. One of their best athletes is going to turn 41 in December and was wearing a suit. Yeah, is like. I mean, is like that's like part of this too. So I don't think this is like a fire. Everybody, like, let's all freak out thing, but their athleticism going to be an issue. And it was last year too. And they mo. They were able to mostly mask it over the course of the season with effort, cohesion and cohesion. It's been a long cohesion. Cohesion. It's a type of food I don't know if you guys have ever gone to. There's a great cohesion restaurant Dave in Long Beach. We should go to that.
- [27:27]
Dave DeFore
It's a Cuban Asian fusion place. Yeah, it's right in Cambodia.
- [27:32]
Dan Woike
Yeah, everybody's at it. Everybody's at it. But yeah, like, that's kind of what I saw. What did you guys. How did it kind of look?
- [27:40]
Dave DeFore
Xena was ripping these guys.
- [27:43]
Xena Keda
Listen. Okay, so Dan to your point about, they don't look like they know each other. You guys know, like, in high school, AAU teams are like those teams that kind of just like plop into, like, Virginia at the Boo Williams tournament, and they're just like the best players and from the country, and they're. It's a lot of one on one. It's a lot of we don't really know what's going on versus the team that's like literally an eye look tells you, go, cut, go. You know, set a screen. That's exactly what it gave. It gave the random assortment of players up against, like, the team that's been playing together since they were eight years old. But to your point, my big thing was not only did they not look athletic, I was really concerned about the sustainability about all of this. Like, I'm looking at one side of the ball on the Lakers side. Luka has an amazing game statistically, right? 43 points in 41 minutes. Being able to get to the line, being able to assist 12 rebounds. And then you add on Austin Reeves.
- [28:38]
Dan Woike
Great on defense too, by the way. He was Luka.
- [28:41]
Xena Keda
Luka was really engaged, I believe Al Horford, like, I'm like, yeah, let's go. Luca, doing your thing. Austin Reeves ends up playing a pretty good game. 26 points, good fourth quarter particularly. But you look at their numbers, 27 attempts from Luca, that is not sustainable. And you look on the opposite side of the ball. You got Batman and Robin, Stephen and Jimmy end up with 55 points combined. They put up 27, 28 shots together. They had attempted almost the same amount of shots that Luka put together. And that is what you want. That's the setup you want in terms of sustainability. When you're talking about your players and your stars, I'm worried about not only the athleticism, but how does Luka Doncic get away with 41 minutes played tonight, not get the win, 43 minutes, put up that level of exertion. And this is night one.
- [29:38]
Dan Woike
I think those are great questions. I mean, I like and I think Will, this is sort of the part of greatness that probably goes under discussed, which is like, there's your greatness and what you can do and there's like, how do you elevate the players around you, right? And this is going to be a team that needs some elevating, you know, And I think when they were at their best in this game, it. I mean, it made sense. It was Luca getting in the paint with, like the right diagonal pass. Luca getting you Know, you know, Austin getting to the rim, you know, that type of stuff, like off of, you know, basically. I mean they're going to be like to a certain extent, isolation driven team, right? Like they have, you know, the best one on one score in the NBA, right? So like they're going to be, I think like somebody said Luca was like 13 or 14 in the paint in this game. And it's like get to the paint, you know, you don't have shot blockers. Like that's going to be, that's gonna be the play now where they're gonna have to grow and where Luke is gonna have to figure this out. And like the players around them are gonna figure it out, are like the back cut baskets. I think they had what, one completed lob in this game, maybe two movement. It wasn't many, I don't think. Yeah, it like, and that to me is like where the, the strangers part kind of comes in where they, you know, it felt like they were kind of, I don't want to say standing around watching. It wasn't necessarily that. It was just like a lot of like, you know, let's like, let's get into offense probably 3 to 4 seconds slower than we want to. Let's not get in transition. So everything was in the half and.
- [31:18]
Dave DeFore
There wasn't any cutting. There was no cutting.
- [31:20]
Xena Keda
The off ball movement was not there. It's just non existent.
- [31:23]
Dan Woike
Well, and I would say too, I would say too. Sorry about my foot. I would say too, like, I think, you know, like if you're a glass half full person, like look at what they were able to do offensively today, like in standstill, right? With the recognition that like there's gonna be, there's gonna be like in theory, you know, like, like time plus commitment to some degree equals chemistry and basketball. Like if you're gonna put in the time together and you're committed to winning and doing it together, like you should get better, right? Like, particularly with time. Now what I kind of think is weird too, and I'm gonna crack my laptop, open it and dig in on as well, is sort of like, you know, the 40,000 born elephant in the room that was sitting on the end of the bench, right, which was like this. I mean like you watch that game and it's like, like they, they could have. They really needed LeBron James. They needed his gravity, you know? Yeah, his gravity, his swagger on defense, his energy, his athleticism, his force, you know, just sort of like, like that. Now can they get all of that stuff While still like, you know, riding like sort of the Luca wave the way they rode. I, I think largely at least like he, yeah, he, he was, Luca was great in this game. If you get that version of Luka Doncic all year long, like you should be in a pretty good place. I, I, I think like, especially if you have, you know, you get the talent injection of LeBron James. So those are the things that I, I think like if I'm probably the reasons why I would say not freaking.
- [33:14]
Andrew Scheck
Out.
- [33:16]
Dan Woike
You know, Although I do guys, I do like a good opening. Like, like we can't, we can be like sort of like, oh my God, we waited all summer and this, this was the basketball we got to watch. And like I was talking to Steve Kerr and I kind of joked about it with him in the hallway afterwards. I was just kind of like, it'll be fun to watch a game where there aren't 50 turnovers. Like that'll be fun. Like we'll get there eventually.
- [33:38]
Andrew Scheck
There was 30.
- [33:39]
Dave DeFore
It was probably 50 points.
- [33:44]
Xena Keda
It was bad. It was sloppy.
- [33:46]
Dan Woike
Yeah, yeah.
- [33:47]
Dave DeFore
Before we get out of here, I, I do gotta ask you just real quick about DeAndre Aiden. How do you play 34 minutes and get six rebounds? How tall is he, Xena? Seven feet tall.
- [33:59]
Xena Keda
He's a seven footer. He's a seven footer.
- [34:01]
Dave DeFore
The six rebounds, that's a problem. The, the entire knock on Ayton has been not playing with force. And this was a matchup that he should have really owned in the middle. That, that has nothing to do with offensive scheme. That has nothing to do with chemistry. That's deandre Aiden. Now whether or not he feels empowered to do those sorts of things, I don't know. But that was a dud of a debut in my opinion for, for Aiden.
- [34:29]
Dan Woike
I mean, I, I think I will give, I, I, I, he did not play well as far as the rebounds go. Look, he spent a lot of time on the perimeter defensively in this game and switching, you know, pulled away from the basket. Now like perfect world scenario. Like you're out there to touch, shot goes up, you hit a body and then you crash and you get to the rim. You know, he doesn't have that kind of a motor right now. I think, I think there's like real like that's a, I mean to me like that is like the area of growth, right? Like that is where this team ceiling elevates really quickly. It's just, it's going to be tough though. It's going to require some patience. I think. And he's going to have to. He's going to have to be able to assess the situation, see what is required of him to help impact winning, and then do it and those. Like, it sounds simple and in some ways it is, but, like, it is also like, kind of an easier said than done situation. So I think, like, you know, the offensive stuff with the underrated a. Like, I think, like, I'll chalk it up to a lot of it. Like, you know, pick and roll chemistry, different things like that. Like, you know, kind of having to approach a screen with Austin Reeves differently than you do with Luka Doncic, figuring out where to roll. I mean, like, they're crossed up right now, right? Like, they're like, they just are. You can. You can see it, I think, you know, ultimately, like, but. But you're right, like, playing hard, getting into contests, you know, blocking a couple shots from, like, the weak side here or there. Like, those are the types of plays I think he can make. He had been making them to some degree, I would say, like, over the last couple preseason games. But still, you know, again, like, I think the best version of this team is a together one, not a Boo Williams. AU right, Jared, by the way. Boo Williams a lump, you know, And I think as of today and like, good news, by the way, guys, you get a nice easy one against Minnesota on Friday. You know, another national televised game, like, you know, I guess. Is it nationally televised if it's on Amazon?
- [36:35]
Dave DeFore
You know what I'm trying to figure out? What is Peacock a national game? I have no idea. Zach Harper did do a watch guide for everyone at the Athletic. Go and subscribe to the Bounce. Dan Woikie, thank you for joining us. Staying up late for us getting those Luka Donches quotes. I appreciate you guys.
- [36:56]
Dan Woike
Thank you for staying a play for me. I appreciate it.
- [36:58]
Andrew Scheck
No, no, no, no.
- [36:59]
Dave DeFore
It's our pleasure. Uh, guys, go and at the Athletic, you know, he's going to be covering the Lakers for us all year. He'll be here a bunch. Thanks to Andrew Scheck for joining us earlier and thanks to Zena Kada. As always. I'm Dave Defor. This has been the NBA Daily. Thanks for waking up with us. Welcome back. NBA morning.
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Zoe got donuts.
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Us with eligible traded in any condition. So what are we having for launch?
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Dan Woike
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