The Athletic NBA Daily
Can the Thunder Repeat? + Post All Star Break Leap Team | Slam N Jam
21 Feb 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to the Saturday Slammin' Jam here on the Athletic NBA Daily's YouTube feed. You gotta watch us on YouTube. We're here on YouTube. It's a great production. We'd love to have you here. We're brought to you by Amazon Prime on today's show. We are gonna do the good, the bad, and the what of this week. And we're gonna try to avoid talking about tanking during that, um...
We're also going to have my good friend Ryland Stiles on the show to talk about the Thunder. And then we're going to do some Thunder trivia. But before all of that, Al, tell us what happened in the NBA this week.
Andrew, our top story this week is that the All-Star Game is good now. In one of the biggest twists of the season. The new format for the All-Star game appeared to work. Ignited by Victor Weminyama's energy in the first game, each of the first three games was close, came down to clutch shots from Scottie Barnes, De'Aaron Fox, and Kawhi Leonard.
In the third game, Kawhi, on an absolute heater, scored 31 in just 12 minutes, and not against typical All-Star defense. It was legitimately cool and fun. The final game, now that was a bit of a snoozer, as the old man U.S. team got run out of the gym by the young guns and All-Star MVP, Anthony Edwards, 47-21.
But all in all, I would say best All-Star game I can remember in a long time, and credit to the league. for preventing a week's worth of the worst NBA pods imaginable. You thought endless segments about fixing tanking was bad. Imagine if they'd been followed up with a segment about fixing the All-Star game.
At least we got some positivity mixed in this week with how fun those games were, which is a big win in my book. Now, as for All-Star Saturday night. Well, the three-point contest was fun. Damian Lillard, stepping onto the court for the first time this season, made it to the finals against Devin Booker and Conn Knipple, and then put those guys away, winning his third three-point contest.
A fun moment after the win, Dame was congratulated by Giannis, and Dame asked him if he placed something on call sheet, while Giannis kept saying, stop, stop, stop. Dame has already committed for next season, and will be recruiting both Steph and Clay to join him. Now, the Shooting Stars competition, it's back, Andrew, and it happened. It was something to watch.
Wasn't bad, but just something to have on your television. The Knicks team, featuring Jalen Brunson, Cat, Allen Houston, and Rick Brunson as official passer, they won. And then we had the dunk contest featuring some guys who did some dunks. Jace Richardson, unfortunately, had the most memorable moment when he took a genuinely hard fall on a dunk attempt and appeared to hit his head on the court.
Miami Heat second-year player Kashaw Johnson won the contest and did seem very happy to be there and be dunking, which was endearing. It was very endearing. The best dunk-related content, though, might have been our guy Matt McClung.
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Chapter 2: What were the highlights of the All-Star Weekend?
But Yong was not having it and made him say it, which was awesome. Another all-star moment that has to be mentioned is that we may have a second burner scandal with Kevin Durant. Messages were released during all-star weekend from a group DM on Twitter that allegedly includes messages between Katie and some of his fans.
The messages attributed to Katie includes several disparaging comments about Katie's former and current teammates, including Jabari Smith Jr. and Alperin Chingun. Not everything was negative though. I interpreted triple double cocaine bear as at least a mildly positive reference to
It's very positive, and it's a very good nickname. It's the best nickname that I've ever heard.
KD brushed aside the accusations at Rockets practice, saying, quote, I'm not here to get into Twitter nonsense, which convinced no one, given his well-documented history of getting into Twitter nonsense. Now, we only got one night of games this week, but there were some notable ones to talk about from Thursday night. First, the Detroit Pistons complete.
completely obliterated the New York Knicks for the third consecutive time this season, winning 126-111 in Madison Square Garden. In their final meeting of the season, Cade Cunningham put up 42-8-13, which included going 5-11 from three.
This was a game that was affected by those suspensions coming out of the Pistons-Hornets brawl, so Detroit did this without having both all-star Jalen Dern and Isaiah Stewart But when you got B-Ball Paul, you're in good hands. And Paul Reed picked up the slack for the missing big men and scored 18-7 with three blocks in the game.
That loss drops the Knicks into a tie with the Cavs in the standings. But those two teams will play very soon, playing next Tuesday in Cleveland. In Cleveland's first game back, they played the Brooklyn Nets. They won handily. Brooklyn is one of the teams that's tanking.
And just to wrap up the tanking news this week, Sham Sharania reporting on Thursday that Commissioner Adam Silver informed the league's 30 general managers that the NBA plans to make anti-tanking rule changes for next season. All right. That one I find weird. That just seems rude to the Pacers. That's just a mean thing for the Pacers. Lottery odds allocated based on two-year records.
Lottery extended to include all playing teams. And then the idea of flattening the odds for all lottery teams. Now these are just ideas that are being discussed. So none of these are final. We don't know what's going to happen. But that's your weekly tanking update. Finally, if you thought the Clippers' luck might run out post-All-Star break, It's not happening, folks.
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Chapter 3: How did the Sixers perform recently?
And it didn't happen, and that was not the main reason things went the way they did in Memphis. Right. But it certainly didn't help.
No, it didn't help. They traded D'Anthony Melton for that Roddy pick. It was really funny because at the end of that pod, we were giving out draft winners. I gave mine to the Pistons.
Chapter 4: What is the current status of the Pistons this season?
A lot of it was for getting Jaden Ivey. I thought that they kind of won the draft with the way that they handled everything. Yeah. Clearly getting Dern was a great thing, but it hasn't worked out with Jay Nivey. He said you gave it to the Sixers for trading their pick for D'Anthony Melton. They were like the draft night winners. Okay, okay.
Was I wrong?
You know what? Looking back, you were the most right out of all of us. I think Matt Penny picked the Spurs as draft night winners. For getting Sohan and whoever else they got in that draft. Also wrong.
Hey, D'Anthony Melton, I'm looking it up. He did play 77 games that next year. Actually, I didn't remember him doing that. You were the most right.
You were the most right because the Spurs drafted three guys that are not on their team anymore. Malachi Branham, Blake Wesley, and Jeremy Sohan.
Do you know D'Anthony Melton's nickname on Basketball Reference?
No.
Mr. Do-Something.
mister do something i've never heard that in my life that is a very interesting nickname hey if you know why that's his nickname please let us know
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Chapter 5: Who are the key players making a leap post-All-Star break?
Okay, before I get to my last pick, some names I considered. Max Christie, Matas Bouzelis, Ayoda Sumnu, Anthony Black, Steph Castle, Brandon Miller, and Jalen Green. I looked long and hard. Jalen Green. Well, that one just felt like too obvious because he's averaging like 11 points. Yeah. That's kind of a Quentin Grimes thing. He's only played seven games. I mean, he's better. He's better. Okay.
I went with another one that feels obvious because he's only played four games, but I'm going to set the expectations high to justify this pick. So it's Scoot Henderson. Finally made his return from a hamstring injury in his first four games. He's been very productive. He's been turning the ball over a lot, sure, but been very productive.
My bet here is that the Blazers are locked into a playing spot.
scoot's going to be eligible for an extension this summer they desperately need more offensive juice and so emphasizing scoot the rest of the season should be a priority like there's not a huge risk even if he's bad that they're going to like fall out of the plan yeah he's only gotten 20 minutes per game so far while on a minute's restriction i'm hoping that begins to increase and he's up near 30 per game by the end of the season even if drew is healthy and
And similar to Matherin, another thing I've got going for me is the schedule. The Portland Trailblazers have the easiest remaining schedule per tank-a-thon. 12 of their final 26 games are against teams currently outside the play-in. So maybe some of my minutes concerns could be helped by blowouts where Scoot's going to get an extended run at the end of games.
As for a prediction, I think for this to count, I need Scoot to get up to something like 19 points, seven assists, getting to the line five plus times per game, improved efficiency, especially at the rim. I think he's got to hit that for this to even count. Okay. So I'm setting the bar kind of high. It feels bold given what we've seen so far in Scoot's career.
But I'm betting that this stretch run ends up being the breakout stretch of his young career. Basically, the way I tried to do this, I really focused on Denny and Giddy because both of those guys were averaging in the teens previously. And they were on teams that were in the play-in. And I do think that matters. They weren't on tanking teams. They were on teams that were trying.
And so that's why I went with Matherin and Scoot, because they're in similar situations. In the case of Matherin, in a new situation like Giddy was. With Scoot, he's coming back from this really long injury. He started to look good at the end of last year. So I'm hoping that he finally has his best stretch of his young career. I think it could happen. So that's why I'm going with Scoot Henderson.
But it's a gamble. It's a big gamble on Scoot. It is a big old gamble. It is a big gamble. I mean, I'm looking back even at last season. I wish you wouldn't. At his splits. And he never even approached 19 points per game. Shut up. Close the browser tab. In any month last season. In fact, in February.
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