Chapter 1: What sparked the discussion about the Pelicans' winning streak?
Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily for December 23rd, 2025. I'm Dave DuFour here with Espera Henne. Coming up, the Pelicans are hot. They just won their fifth straight. We're going to talk about that. And Andrew Schlecht is here to talk about the Thunder after their latest win and whether or not they're breaking the NBA.
Good morning, everybody. What's up, S? Good morning. Spoiler alert. Yes, they are breaking the NBA.
Yes. Okay. It's not so much they're breaking it as they've broken it because they're better than everyone and they own all of the draft picks. Yes. Spoiler for the end of the show. Absolutely. Hey, speaking of spoiler, how about these Pelicans, man? Playing spoiler.
Chapter 2: How are the Thunder performing in their recent games?
Yeah, a little bit, right? We wrote them off. They make a coaching change, and all of a sudden, things are a little bit different. Zion's been back out there. They pick up another win. They're fifth straight. They beat the Mavericks, who have been playing better basketball, by the way, with Anthony Davis and Cooper Flagg out there.
Like I said, Zion's been coming off the bench for this team here lately. S, what have you noticed about the Pels in this turnaround? I mean, it's more than just a vibe shift.
It's a shift of personality on there. I think the number one change is one, Derek Queen is the franchise where he is starting. He's our starting center for the rest of the year. And I think that was a decision James Brago made very, very quickly. This is his team. We're rolling with it. We've drafted this guy. We're entrusting this guy.
And the same thing applies to Jeremiah Fears, who is just downhill gravity. He's our starting point guard. Let's go with that. Now you have these two guys off the bench who, if you think of them as bench players, you're like, oh, wow, this is a really talented team now. Jordan Poole, Zion Williamson, two guys who can light it up offensively.
I think those two as bench guys, especially Zion, you think of Zion as a guy who ā 25 minutes a night gives him that range where he can stay healthy, hopefully play longer, hopefully play more games throughout a season. And what bench player can you think of that drops 24 points on 14 shots for you? There's not that many.
Right.
Well, you know, if you think about this, one of the secrets to success for a six-man-of-the-year candidate is scoring a lot of points. Absolutely. Points per game bias. Right. You're playing against a lot of second units, right? It's not like you're getting the other team's fastball. So even if this is just temporary...
To get him healthy, to make sure that, you know what I mean, he's playing his best basketball. I don't think it's a bad idea. As long as, you know, when he has a great game like he did last night, you always have the option of him closing with Derek Queen. I mean, Queen's ability to pass and to shoot and stretch the floor opens up a lot.
And the other thing is, I actually think James Borrego has done a really good job of getting Zion moving without the ball. Yeah. A couple of times tonight where he kind of comes off the, you know, like a double a double drag moving towards the basket. Anything where he's going downhill is unstoppable.
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Chapter 3: What strategic changes have the Pelicans made recently?
And it begs the question, What does this team look like right now if they had made the coaching change during the offseason, which is always something, I mean, in my time doing this job, I've always pushed toward you make the coaching change early. You always want to be early.
And even if you're not sure if you can replace them with someone better, I think for a team like this that was not really doing much last year, the time to have made the change would have been during the summer. James Borrego was already in-house. They already had the inkling to do it. Yeah, they were already thinking of it. of doing it in the first place.
All they did was set themselves back this season and now they've got a hole to dig out of. And I'm wondering to myself, look, man, if this is, let's say this team that we've seen here, the last 10, 15 games is more of what this team is. Do they have a shot at maybe making the play in? I mean, this is,
They don't have an incentive to lose, S. They do not have an incentive to lose. And I think that's been the big discussion with the Pelicans all year is what's hanging over their head, which is they can't freely tank. We will have a discussion with Andrew in a little bit about the potential top five or top six in this upcoming draft.
That would have been a great talent to add to this current fun Pelicans group. They don't have that option right now. But I think ultimately maybe they can make the play in. They're only five games back. They're only five games back, and there's still a lot of time. You know what?
You're kind of selling me on it because the last playing spot, Blazers are losing their game, starting to look a little bit slower, even though they've won three in a row and lost to the Pistons tonight. But I don't know. I think they can make a run. Sure. Why not?
Let me ask you a question. In a world where everyone's scared to make moves because of the Thunder and because of Wemby, do they buy? Joe Dumars, he's shown he's a wild card. That is true. Right? That is true. And maybe he drafted American Jokic in Derrick Queen. You know what the craziest part is? What if they're a buyer? What if they're going out looking for guys instead of selling guys off?
There's a lot of talent available. I'll tell you what their midseason acquisition is going to be. DeJounte Murray. Because it feels like we all forgot that DeJounte Murray tore his Achilles last year. Yeah, we did. And he's coming back pretty soon, I want to say. I think January or February. Not bad to add an all-star level point guard to your team right now. Yeah. I don't know.
Look, the Pels, they're more fun than they were.
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Chapter 4: How did the coaching change impact the Pelicans' performance?
Yeah, it's probably more of the same. I mean, and I think that we're also not only do they have like this lottery pick coming, but there's more cohesion with the group in general that's happening. And then you have guys like J-Dub and Chet and Case and Wallace that are all very young players still. that are emerging more and more.
Cason's development has probably gone under the radar for a lot of people because he's what he's like the seventh guy on the pecking order, but he's gotten, he's gotten a lot better for them. Dub is, he had a really good game tonight. This is like one of a handful of like good games that he's had since he's been back. I mean, he dunked it really hard in this one.
He was 10 of 20 from the field, 24.6 boards. Two assists in this one. He looked more like himself. He was getting to that midi jumper that he's been able to get to since he's gotten to the league. And that looked really good. And he didn't look like his wrist was bothering him as badly tonight. And so just looking for games like that.
for him moving forward as you know, if you're going to sit anybody, I would have probably said maybe they would have sat him just because that risk has been bothering him, but he seemed great tonight. And so like, that's a really good sign. His development is another huge thing too. Like he's going to continue to get better.
And so the internal development within the thunder, all the assets that they have, uh, the Clippers doing what they're doing this year, all of that is kind of helping the Thunder continue to push this thing along.
With Kaysan, I do want to point out, I think we just think about him so much as a defender. Defender first, and he's not a primary option on offense. But we don't think about him as a versatile defender. I mean, he's a point of attack guy for sure. But there were times in this game where, you know, Jaron Jackson got him in the post.
And just the fact that he fought him off and just continues to compete, even when he's got the mismatch. I mean, that's one of the things about Kaysan that stands out to me. I mean, he's a dog and he's always trying to dunk on guys.
He went to the Alex Caruso School of Basketball. Yeah, like the last year, whatever it's been, he has learned directly from the master of guarding smaller or guarding bigger guys or guarding smaller guys, regardless of what it is. I think he's an all defense member at this point. Truthfully, just the way that he's guarding. It's it's kind of hard to pick one guy from this under team.
You could probably pick multiple. Chet obviously is part of that. Andrew, I have to ask you a question. So the West is pretty interesting this year. A lot of intriguing teams. We've talked on this podcast about how they lost to the Spurs. They haven't played the Nuggets yet. Very intrigued by when they played the Nuggets. They've played the Rockets.
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Chapter 5: What are the Thunder's chances of making the playoffs?
I really think it's just the Nuggets at this point. I think the Spurs are... They're very good. I just think they're probably too young. Like the guys that need to lead them to playoff victories are probably too young at this point and haven't had to go through it yet. Yeah. The Lakers defense is just not there. I know the Timberwolves beat the Thunder the other night.
The Thunder handled them pretty easily this past year. And I do think like their depth is worse and the Thunder are just better. This year, Houston is an interesting team. I still wonder what they look like on the offensive end in crunch time when you have so many guys that you don't have to guard at the three-point line. So I think the list kind of ends there.
Okay, so your eyebrows are raised just a little bit for Houston, though.
They're good. That's a really good team. Yeah. I mean, like you look at their point differential. That's something that I really like to look at when it comes to like, are these guys title contenders? And it's really, it's the thunder. It's the nuggets. And then it's the rockets. Like those are the teams that I think are the best teams in the West.
And then the spurs are just right on the outside of that. But I really think it's the nuggets because when these games get tight and you turn to the best players in the world and they have one of those guys and they're deeper now too.
And they have options. I mean, they've, they've been trekking along even without Christian Brown and Aaron Gordon. We just talked about that the other day, just the way they're like finding guys.
Yeah. It's pretty, pretty impressive. Um, Talk to me about the Spurs a little bit. Obviously, they get the big win in the NBA Cup. We've got two games coming up against them. Wimby is going to be out for game one on the 23rd, but he'll be there for that Christmas Day game. It's a lot of Spurs and Thunder.
And to be frank, it's probably the future of at least the Western Conference is a lot of Spurs and Thunder. It feels like we're getting like the sneak preview of the Western Conference finals the next maybe five years after this one. A lot of people comparing the Spurs to the Thunder, you know, saying that they remind them of that team from two or three years ago.
What do you think about the Spurs? Like, what's your assessment as a guy who's seen what happened, you know, just recently in OKC?
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Chapter 6: What makes the Thunder a team to watch this season?
He would allow the Thunder to play a style that they really don't have available to them right now.
Can I just say it's insane that you can just pick best player available with the number one overall pick?
Well, you should be able to.
No, no, I know, but it's the Oklahoma City Thunder, and they have three losses this season. That's crazy.
I will say this. It is going to take a pretty unusual top three, top four pick if that's what they end up getting. And who knows? Maybe the Clippers win some games. Maybe this is like the sixth, seventh, eighth pick. I don't know. But if they do wind up in the top three, the conversations that are going to exist with these players. And this isn't fantasy basketball.
These are like real people that the expectation for these top three players is not only are they going to play, but they're out to earn their second contract. That's right. Like you sign your first contract. Whenever you're a top three pick, you're not thinking about that money. What you're thinking about is the money that you're going to get on your second deal.
Like, what do I need to do to get the money on that second deal?
That rookie max. Absolutely.
And like how, do the Thunder provide that opportunity? And I do think there's going to be like this push and pull that exists there because you're going to need the right kind of personality, the right kind of kid to come in here that wants to learn, that wants to win, that wants to win at a high level, that can hop on the fastest moving train in the NBA right now.
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