Ben DuBose

KD was shit-talking, and they just made a statement.

At the time, the Nuggets had the best-rated offense in the league, and the Rockets held them to, like, 66 points in the first three quarters and was their lowest scoring output by far all season, at least at that time when they had Jokic.

And so I'm starting to become a believer that against the good teams—

Maybe the Thunder being the exception.

I will say the Thunder got a startling amount of really open threes in that game against the Rockets a week ago, but they're a different challenge for everybody.

Aside from that, I've just seen enough from the Rockets against the good teams that makes me, at least at this point, give them the benefit of the doubt.

Perhaps the next week changes my thinking.

The other thing, before we wind down the pod, I wanted to get your input on Paolo, and this will be tested the next two nights specifically.

This team is getting to a massive split in home versus road performance.

After that 4-1 home stand, they're 15-3 at Toyota Center.

They're 11-12 on the road.

Now, perhaps some of that's been made worse by how weird the schedule has been.

Like 23 of their first 36 were on the road, tied for the most at that point of any team in NBA history.

So you go on these long road trips, you get fatigued.

You also have some injuries in there.

And perhaps it's exaggerated a little bit.

But at this point, it's a striking differential.

Like that 15-3 at home is just lethal.

And they're literally below 500 on the road.

And so when you look at the standings right now where it's tightly packed, I mentioned that they're in the fourth spot, but they're only a game back of the Spurs for the two seed.