DeMar DeRozan’s 27 points helped the Sacramento Kings defeat the Cleveland Cavaliers, sending them to their third straight loss. Dave DuFour and Es Baraheni discuss the Cavs’ losing streak, debate game winners between Cade Cunningham and Andrew Nemhard, and catch up on the latest in the Western Conference playoff race. Then, the Athletic’s Jovan Buha joins the show with an update on LeBron James and Rui Hachimura’s respective returns from injury, insight on the relationship between Luka Doncic and JJ Redick , and to discuss the Lakers’ biggest weakness.Host: Dave DuFourWith: Es Baraheni & Jovan BuhaExecutive Producer: Andrew SchlechtAudio Producer: Grayson Moodyhttps://www.nytimes.com/athletic/nba/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Full Episode
Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily. Coming up, the Cavs lost their third straight. We got a couple of game winners and we're going to compare them. And then Yovan Buha breaks down the Lakers, LeBron's comeback, and what they need to do the rest of the regular season. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, S. How are you?
Good morning, sir. Man, what a night of basketball. Oh, my goodness.
Another interesting night. We have playoff implications on the line with a lot of these games. But before we get to the games that actually have some weight in the standings, we got to talk about the former. Best record holder in the league, the Cleveland Cavaliers, for the first time all season, they don't have the best record in the league. They lost their third straight game to the Kings.
Big win for the Kings, who are trying to stay in the ninth spot and hopefully get into that eighth spot in the play-in. But I want to start, I just want to talk about the Cavs. Losing three straight for a team that we've seen just cruising all year long, it's starting to raise some questions. I joked and said that they were frauds because they lost two in a row.
But now that they've lost three, now they're definitely fraud. They're obviously not frauds. But I am a little bit nervous that the scouting report is catching up.
Yeah, I mean, look, let me let me try to contextualize the losses. So Orlando, they don't have Evan Mobley. I think some of the physicality that Orlando throughout them outmatched Clippers. They had a fully healthy roster, but also some of that physicality. I think the length, especially Zubats, did a great job in that like fourth quarter to be able to dominate. Right.
You look at this game against Sacramento. I actually thought they did a really good job defensively against them. Devin Carter, the rookie, was just a pest at the point of attack. I thought Malik Monk had a lot of good moments defensively. So this Kings team that's desperate sort of dug in and played good defensive basketball with no Zach Levine, no DeMontis Sabonis.
So I think credit to the Kings for locking in and doing what they had to to win this game. They had some electric moments from DeMar and Malik Monk in that fourth quarter to basically seal the deal. But I do think to your point, we are seeing teams be more physical with Cleveland. And when you're not, when you're missing a guy like tonight, the Cavs were missing Darius Garland, right?
They are so much the sum of their parts. You know, they are again, like I mentioned, like this egalitarian offense, like, When you take out one of those components, it makes it a little bit easier to be physical with them, take away one part, and then now you have that advantage, if that makes sense.
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